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DAVID GRAY, AND OTHER ESSAYS, 
CHIEFLY ON POETRY. 



Sing, Poet, small or mighty — hug to thyself 
The luxury of seeing — sing, and die ! 
'Tis the old story of the figleaf time : 
A groping after beauty, a divine, 
Aspiring, climbing, impulse, after God; — 
Something far better than successful too — 
Eternal ! 



DAVID GRAY, 

AND 

OTHER ESSAYS, CHIEFLY ON 
POET R Y. 

li- 
ROBERT BUCHANAN. 




David Gray. 

LONDON: 
SAMPSON LOW, SON, AND MARSTON, 

MILTON HOUSE, LUDGATE HILL. 
1868. 



The right of translation is reserved. 



FIRST WORD. 




T is from no desire to appear in a new 
character that I publish the present 
volume. The following Essays, in- 
deed, are prose additions and notes 
to my publications in verse, rather than mere at- 
tempts at general criticism, for which, indeed, I 
have little aptitude. They are my Confession of 
Faith. I have here briefly touched on several 
great and magnificent questions immediately 
affecting the poetic personality : — on the nature 
and character of the Poet par excellence, on the 
Student's Vocation, on what is and what is not 
moral in the Student's Utterance, slightly on reli- 
gious light and truth ; illustrating my matter by 
such sketches as that of Whitman, and such notes 
as that on Uerrick's Hesperides. More would 
have been added, and particularly an Essay on 
" The Poetry of David Gray," had not my health 



vi FIRST WORD. 

suddenly broken down just as the volume was 
going to press. The book, however, is complete 
as it stands, — an epitome of what may be said 
hereafter in different ways. 

The biography of David Gray is another 
matter. A large portion of it appeared some 
years ago in the " Cornhill Magazine," but the 
additions, now first published, are very important. 
It is a story known and told as only one could 
know and tell it ; and will, I trust, send still 
more readers to Gray's wonderful poems. The 
little green-bound duodecimo, " The Luggie and 
other Poems, by the late David Gray," was 
wafted out unto the great world, heralded by a 
kindly preface and a brief memoir. It excited 
little or no comment. The exquisite music was 
too low and tender to attract crowds, or to entice 
coteries delighted with the scream of the whipper- 
snapper. Nevertheless, a few rare spirits heard 
and welcomed the truest, purest, tenderest 
lyrical note that has floated to English ears this 
half-century. 

Robert Buchanan. 

Sligachan, Isle of Skye, 
Dec. 1, 1867. 



CONTENTS. 



I. The Poet, ok Seer 

II. David Gray 

III. The Student, and his Vocation 

IV. Waet Whitman . 
V. Herrick's Hesperides . 

VI. Literary Morality 

VII. On a Passage in Heine 

VIII. On my own Tentatives 



Page 
1 

61 

175 
201 
221 
237 
269 
287 



I. 
THE POET, OR SEER 

A DEFINITION. 



He keeps, where there is lack of light, 
Tlie loveliness of perfect sight. 
Hark ! how his human heart anon 
Leaps with the bliss he looks upon /— 
Go forth, O perfect Heart and Eyes, 
Stand in the crowd, and melodise ! 



THE POET, OE SEER. 




HAT then is the Poet, or Seer, as dis- 
tinguished from the philosopher, the 
man of science, the politician, the 
tale-teller, and others with whom he 
has many points in common ? He is, indeed, a 
student as other students are, but he is emphati- 
cally the student who sees, who feels, who sings. 
The Poet, briefly described, is he whose existence 
constitutes a new experience — who sees life newly, 
assimilates it emotionally, and contrives to utter 
it musically. His qualities, therefore, are triune. 
His sight must be individual, his reception of 
impressions must be emotional, and his utterance 
must be musical. Deficiency in any one of the 
three qualities is fatal to his claims for office. 
I. And first, as to the Glamour, the rarest 



4 THE POET, OR SEER. 

and most important of all gifts ; so rare, indeed, 
and so powerful, that it occasionally creates, in 
very despite of nature, the other poetic qualities. 
Yet that individual sight may exist in a character 
essentially unpoetic, in a temperament purely in- 
tellectual, might be proven by reference to more 
than one writer — notably, to a leading novelist. 
That proof, however, is immaterial. The point is, 
how to detect this individual sight, this Glamour, 
how to describe it, — how, in fact, to find a cri- 
terion which will prove this or that person to be 
or not to be a Seer. 

The criterion is easily found and readily ap- 
plied. We find it in the special intensity, the 
daring reiteration, the unwearisome tautology, of 
the utterance. The Seer is so occupied with his 
vision, so devoted in the contemplation of the new 
things which nature reserved for his special see- 
ing, that he can only describe over and over 
again — in numberless ways — in infinite moods of 
grief, ecstasy, awe — the character of his sight. 
He has discovered a new link, and his business is 
to trace it to its uttermost consequences. He 
beholds the world as it has been, but under a new 



THE POET, OR SEER. 5 

colouring. While small men are wandering up and 
down the world, proclaiming a thousand discover- 
ies, turning up countless moss-grown truths, the 
Seer is standing still and wrapt, gazing at the 
apparition, invisible to all eyes save his, holding 
his hand upon his heart in the exquisite trouble of 
perfect perception. And behold ! in due time, 
his inspiration becomes godlike, insomuch as the 
invisible relation is incorporated in actual types, 
takes shape and being, and breathes and moves, 
and mingles in tangible glory into the approven 
culture of the world. 

For, let it be noted, Nature is greedy of her 
truths, and generally ordains that the perception 
of one link in the chain of her relations is enough 
to make man great and sacerdotal ; only twice, in 
supreme moments, she creates a Plato and a 
Shakespeare, proving the possibility, twice in time, 
of a sight imperfect but demi-godlike. " Life 
is a stream of awful passions, yet grandeur of 
character is attainable if we dare the fatal 
fury of the torrent." Thus said the Greek trage- 
dians, but how variously ! The hopelessness of 
the struggle, yet the grandeur of struggling at all, 



6 THE POET, OR SEER. 

is uttered by all three — each, in his own fashion. 
In despite of madness, adultery, murder, incest, 
— in connection with all that is horrible, — in 
defiance of the very gods, (Edipus, Ajax, Medea, 
Orestes, Antigone, agonize divinely, and, perish- 
ing, attain the repose of antique sculpture. The 
same undertone pervades all this antique music, 
but is never so obtruded as to be wearisome. Never 
was the tyranny of circumstance, the inexorable 
penalties enforced even on the innocent when 
laws are broken, represented in such wondrous 
forms. Under such penalties the innocent may 
perish, but their reward is their very innocence. 
Even when they lament aloud, when they exclaim 
against the direness of their doom, these figures 
lose none of their nobility. In the Philoctetes, 
the very cries of physical pain are dignified ; in 
the (Edipus, the bitterness of the blind sufferer is 
noble ; in the Prometheus, the shriek of triumph- 
ant agony is sublime. 

These three dramatists uttered the truth as 
they beheld it ; nor do they interfere in any wise 
with higher interpretations of the same conditions. 
They used the light of their generation ; and the 



THE POET, OR SEER. 7 

value of their revelation lies in the sincerity and 
splendour of the contemporary utterance. The 
same thing is not to be said again. It was a cry 
heard early in time; it is an echo haunting the 
temple of extinct gods. But its truth to humanity 
is eternal. We have the same agonies to this day, 
but we regard them differently. All that can be 
said on the heathen side has been said supremely. 
While the dramatist depicts the fortunes and 
questionings of small groups and individuals, the 
epic poet chronicles the history of the world. It is 
not every day we can have an epic ; for only twice 
or thrice in time are there materials for an epic. 
Homer is the historian of the gods, and of the 
social life under Jove and his peers ; through his 
page blows the fresh breeze of morning, the white 
tents glimmer on Troy plain, horses neigh and 
heroes buckle on armour, — while aloft the heavens 
open, showing the glittering gods on the snowy 
shoulder of Olympus, Iris darting on the rainbow, 
whose lower end reddens the grim features of 
Poseidon, driving his chariot through the foam 
of the Trojan sea. The passion of iihe Ibiad is 
anger, the action, war ; in the Odyssey , we have 



8 THE POET, OR SEER. 

the domestic side of the same life, the softer 
touches of superstition, the milder influences of 
gods and goddesses, heroes and their queens. 
But the life is the same in both — large, primitive, 
colossal — absorbing all the social and religious 
significance of a period. 

What Homer is to the polytheism of the early 
Greeks, the Old Testament is to the monotheism 
of the Hebrews. It is the epic of that life — the 
wilder, weirder, more spiritual poem of a wilder, 
weirder, more spiritual period. It is the utter- 
ance of many mouths, the poem of many episodes, 
but the theme is unique, pre-eminent — the spirit 
of the one God, breathing on His chosen peoples, 
and steadily moving on to fixed consummations 
foreshadowed in the prophets. We have had no 
such wondrous epic as this since, and can have 
none such again. It is the poem of the one God, 
when yet He was merely a voice in the thunder- 
cloud, a breath between the coming and going 
of the winds. 

Where else, in Virgil's time, subsisted the mat- 
ter for an epic ? To sing of ./Eneas and his for- 
tunes was certainly patriotic, but the subject, at 



THE POET, OR SEER. 9 

the best, was merely local — a contemporary, not 
an eternal, theme. The two great forms of early 
European life had been phrased in the two great 
early epics ; and till Christ taught, the time for 
the third great poem of masses had not come. In 
point of fact, the third great poem has not yet 
been written. The New Testament, of course, is 
didactic, not poetic ; and the Paradise Regained 
of Milton is purely modern and academic. 

The fourth European epic is the Divine Comedy 
of Dante ; the fifth and last is the Paradise Lost 
of Milton. It is scarcely necessary to describe in 
detail the character of the vision in each of these 
cases. Dante saw Roman Catholicism as no eye 
ever saw it before, watched it to its uttermost re- 
sults, made of it an image enduring by the very 
intensity of its outlines, — framed of it the epic of 
the early church. Milton's perfect sight pictured, 
under latter lights, the wonders of the primeval 
world. The theme was old, but the light was 
new ; and no man had seen angels till Milton saw 
them, having been first blinded, that his spiritual 
sight might be unimpeded. 

Thus, all these men, — Homer, the framers of 



10 THE POET, OR SEER. 

the biblical epos, JSschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, 
Dante, Milton, — were poets by virtue of having 
seen some side of truth as no others saw it. If 
some were greater than others, their materials 
were perhaps greater. Not every one is so 
situated in time as to see the subject of a new 
epos, waiting to be sung. But the Seer " shines 
in his place, and is content." Even Goethe had 
his truth to utter, and was so far a Seer. He 
was great in literature, by virtue of his spiritual 
littleness. It needed such a man to see nature in 
the cold light of self-worship, to betoken the 
futility of pure artistic striving. Yet this, at the 
best, was negative teaching, and so far, inferior. 

But, it may be objected, these men surely ex- 
pressed more than one truth in their generation. 
In no wise, for each had but one point of view ; 
there was no hovering, no doubting ; their gaze 
was fixed as the gaze of stars. The object is 
eternal, it is the point of view which changes. 
Take Milton, for example ; the peculiarity of 
Milton as a Seer is the angelic spirituality of his 
sight, its rejection of all but perfectly noble types 
for poetic contemplation. It would seem that, 



THE POET, OR SEER. 11 

from having once walked with angels, he sees 
even common things in a divine white light. He 
breathes the thin serene air of the mountain- top. 
He seems calm and passionless ; his heart beats 
in great glorified throb s, with no tremor; his 
speech is stately and crystal clear ; he is for ever 
referring man to his Maker ; for ever comparing 
our stature with that of angels. Mark, further, 
that his spiritual creatures are profoundly intel- 
lectual creatures, strangely subtle and lofty 
reasoners. He holds pure intellect so divine 
a thing that, in spite of himself, he makes the 
devil his hero. " The end of man," he says in 
effect, "is to contemplate God, and enjoy Him 
for ever." But he says this in a way which is 
not final; there may be truth beyond Milton's 
truth, but one does not belie the other; this 
blind man saw as with the eye, and spake as 
with the tongue, of angels. 

Utterances such as these once attained, per- 
ceptions so peculiar once welded into the culture 
of the world, it behoves no man to re-utter them 
in the reiterative spirit of their first discoverers. 
He who looks at life exactly as Milton, or Keats, 



12 THE POET, OR SEER. 

or Dante did, may be an excellent being, but he 
is certainly too late to be a Seer. Yet each new 
Seer is, of necessity, familiar with the discoveries 
of his predecessors ; the white light of Milton's 
purity chastens and solemnizes Wordsworth's 
diction; while the glow of Elizabethan colour 
tinges the pale cheek of Keats the lover. The 
Seer is not the person of Goethe's epigram, — 

Ein Quidam sagt : " Ich bin von keiner Schule ; 
Kein Meister lebt mit dem ich buhle ; 
Auch bin ich weit davon entfernt, 
Dass ich von Todten was gelernt." 
Das heisst, wenn ich ihn recht verstand — 
" Ich bin ein Narr auf eigne Hand !" 

Nay, as each great Poet sings, we again and 
again catch tones struck by his predecessors — 
Homer, iEschylus, Dante, Job, Solomon, Milton, 
Goethe, and the rest, — but deeper, stronger, more 
permanent than all, we catch the broken voice of 
the man himself, saying a mystic thing that we 
have never heard before. The later we come 
down in time, the frequenter are the echoes ; they 
are the penalty the modern pays for his privi- 
leges. iEschylus and the rest echo Homer and 



THE POET, OR SEER. 13 

the minstrels. The Hebrew prophets, the heathen 
poets, the Italian minstrels, — Homer, Moses, 
Tasso, Dante, — reverberate in every page of 
Milton ; yet they only add volume to the English 
voice. Shakespeare catches cries from all the 
poetic voices of Europe,* daringly translating into 
his own phraseology the visions of other and 
smaller singers, and mellowing his blank verse by 
the study even of contemporaries. In Chaucer's 
breezy song come odours from the Greek -ZEgean, 
and whispers from Tuscany and Provence. Aris- 
tophanes, again and again, inspires the poetically 
humorous twinkle in the eyes of Moliere. But 
the plagiarism of such writers is kingly plagiarism ; 
the poets ennoble the captives they take in con- 
quest ; refusing instruction from no voice, how- 
ever humble ; accepting the matter as divinely 
sent by nature, but never imitating the tones of 
the medium which transmits the matter. 

There is no better sign of unfitness for the high 

* Note how he spiritualises still further what is already 
spiritual in the poetic prose of Plutarch ; as an example, 
compare with the original passage in the Life of Antony the 
Speech of Enobarbus, descriptive of Cleopatra in her barge. 



14 THE POET, OR SEER. 

poetic ministry than a too tricksy delight in imi- 
tating other voices, however admirable. Eacine 
caught the Greek stateliness so well that he has 
scarcely an accent of his own, save, of course, the 
mere general accentuation of his people. In 
reading him, therefore, we have constantly before 
our mind's eye the picture of a Frenchman on the 
stage of the great amphitheatre ; we see the 
masks, the fixed lineaments expressive of single 
passions ; and we hear the high-pitched soliloquies 
of Greece translated into a modern tongue. 
Eacine, indeed, is better reading than any trans- 
lator of the tragedians, but he is no Seer. On the 
other hand, Moliere was nearly as much under 
influence as Eacine, but the splendour of his in- 
dividual vision lifted him high into the ranks of 
poetic teachers. He was an arrant thief, robbing 
the playwrights of all countries without mercy, 
but the roguish gleam of the thief's eyes is never 
lost under the load of stolen raiment. We think 
of him, not of what he is stealing ; the dress 
makes plainer, instead of hiding, the natural 
peculiarities of the wearer. 

There is, then, no danger in echoes, where 



THE POET, OR SEER. 15 

they do not drown the voice ; when they are too 
audible, that is the case. The greatest artists 
utter old truths with all the force of novelty ; not 
in philosophy only, but in poetry also, are the 
worn cries repeated over and over again. These 
cries are common to all the race of Seers, and 
may be described as the poetic u terminology." 

According to the dignity of the revelation will 
be the rank of the Seer in the Temple. The epic 
poet is great, because his matter is great in the 
first place, and because he has not fallen below the 
level of his matter. The dramatist is great by 
his truth to individual character not his own, and 
his power of presenting that truth while spiritual- 
izing into definite form and meaning some vague 
situation in the sphere of actual or ideal life. The 
lyric poet owes his might to the personal character 
of the emotion aroused by his vision. Then, there 
are ranks within ranks. Not an eye in the throng, 
however, but has some object of its own, and some 
peculiar sensitiveness to light, form, colour. To 
Milton, a prospect of heavenly vistas, where 
stately figures walk and cast no shade; but to 
Pope (a seer, though low down in the ranks) the 



16 THE POET, OR SEER. 

pattern of tea-cups, and the peeping of clocked 
stockings under farthingales. While the rouge 
on the cheek of modern love betrays itself to the 
languid yet keen eyes of Alfred de Musset, 
Robert Browning is proclaiming the depths of 
tender beauty underlying modern love and its 
rouge ; each is a Seer, and each is true, only one 
sees a truth beyond the other's truth. After 
Wordsworth has penetrated with solemn-sounding 
footfall into the aisle of the Temple, David Gray 
follows, and utters a faint cry of beautiful yearn- 
ing as he dies upon the threshold. 

One word, in this place, as to the end of Art — 
poetic art particularly, and the mistaken ideas con- 
cerning that end. That end has been described 
from time immemorial as " pleasure." Now, 
art is doubtless pleasant to the taste. It may be 
said, further, that art, even when it uses the most 
painful machinery, when it chronicles human 
agony and pictures tears and despair, does so in 
such a way as to cause a certain enjoyment. But 
the pleasure thus produced is not the aim, but 
an accompaniment of the aim, proportioned and 
regulated by qualities existing in materials ex- 



THE POET, OR SEER. 17 

tracted from life itself. The aim of all life is 
accompanied by pleasure, includes pleasure, in 
the highest sense of that word. The specific aim 
of art, in its definite purity, is spiritualization; 
and pleasure results from that aim, because the 
spiritualization of the materials of life renders 
them, for subtle reasons connected with the soul, 
more beautifully and deliciously acceptable to the 
inner consciousness. Even in very low art we 
find spiritualization of a kind. But pleasure, as 
mere pleasure, is produced on every side of us by 
the simplest and least intricate experiences of 
existence itself. The woe and hopelessness of 
the popular creed is that it thoroughly separates 
art from utility. Pleasure, merely as pleasure, is 
worthless to beings sent down on earth to seek 
that euphrasy which purges the vision of the in- 
ner eye — beings to whom art was given, not a 
mere musical accompaniment to a dull drama, but 
as the toucher of the mysterious chords of inquiry 
which invest that drama with a grand and divine 
signification. Nor must we confound the purify- 
ing spirit of art with didactic sermonizing and 
direct moral teaching. The spirit who seizes the 
c 



18 THE POET, OR SEER. 

forms of life, and passes their spiritual equivalents 
into the minds of men on chords of exquisite sen- 
sation, wears no academic gown, writes no formal 
treatises in verse. The exquisite sensation is a 
means, and not an end. It is a consequence of 
the divine system on which she works, and she 
produces it as much for its own sake as Nature 
creates a butterfly for the sake of the down on 
its wings. 

The lower condition of the aim of art, if 
I have stated that aim properly, places fresh 
obstacles in the way of the construction of an 
exact science of pleasure. What is one man's 
delight is another man's aversion. One lady en- 
joys the method of Miss Braddon, while her 
neighbour even gets beyond George Eliot. Scores 
of people absorb as much pleasure out of Long- 
fellow as a solitary idealist extracts from Eichter. 
But though pleasure emanates from all works 
properly called artistic, ranks are apportioned in 
the Temple of Worthies according to the amount 
of spiritualization, not according to the amount of 
pleasure involved. The higher the spiritualiza- 
tion the less the need of direct teaching ; the 
smaller the artist, the more his need to sermonize. 



THE POET, OR SEER. 19 

We admit " Lear" to be great art, because it ab- 
sorbs, in one perfect spiritual form, picturesque, 
emotional, musical, the amplest and most dramatic 
elements of human existence. We call the Cenci 
smaller art, because it spiritualizes elements in 
themselves horrible and narrow as representing 
humanity. And we call the amusing " Ingoldsby 
Legends" no art at all, because their direct aim is 
pleasure, and they spiritualize no form of life 
whatever. 

Contemporary critics are fond of affirming that 
art, so far from having any moral purpose, has 
nothing to do with morality. This is saying in 
effect that nature has nothing to do with morality. 
For art is the spiritual representation, the alter 
ego, of nature ; and nothing that is true in nature 
is false in art. Astronomy as much as morality, 
concrete experiences as well as abstract ideas, 
have their place in nature and in art ; they are a 
part of the whole, which has two lives, the lower 
and the higher, the real and the artistic. An 
essentially immoral form, a bestiality, a lie, an in- 
sincerity, is an outrage in life ;* but it has no 



* See upres, the paper on " Literary Immortality." We 



20 THE POET, OB SEER. " 

permanent place in art, because spiritualization is 
fatal to its very perceptibility. The basest things 
have their spiritual significance, but their base- 
ness has evaporated when the significance is ap- 
parent. The puddle becomes part of the rainbow. 
It is necessary to understand these points 
clearly ; for if pleasure were the end of art, and 
art had nothing to do with morality, the purport 
of this volume would be unintelligible. 

II. The second essential peculiarity of the Poet 
is that of emotional assimilation of impressions. 
Where intellect coerces emotion, by however faint 
an effort, the result is criticism of life, however 
exquisite. Where emotion coerces intellect, the 
result is poetry. 

It is not enough, observe, to see vividly. Sir 
Walter Scott could see as vividly as Keats, — 
but he was incapable of such emotion. Scott, in- 
deed, is the greatest modern writer who may un- 
hesitatingly be described as unpoetic. He was 

have modern instances of subjects chosen for artistic treat- 
ment, which are abominable and false in nature — e. g. the 
Sapphic passion. 



THE POET, OR SEER. 21 

true both to human types and to society. He 
was able to clothe the bare outline of history with 
vivid form and colour. Writing at a time when 
individualism was at its height in England, ere 
Whig and Tory had merged into one vacuous 
nonentity, he could not fail to shadow forth those 
higher aspirations which are the exclusive pro- 
perty of individual men of genius. Yet no man 
ever laboured to depict trifles with a more lofty 
devotion to general truth. There was nofinicism 
in the author of " Waverley." He depicted in 
faithful aesthetic photography the manners and 
qualities of ordinary or extraordinary men and 
women. He was not always profound, nor always 
noble. But over all his works lies the brilliant 
radiance of the artistic sympathies, giving, to what 
might otherwise have been simply a colourless 
likeness, the marvellous beauty of an exquisite 
literary painting. Scott, however, was no poet. 
His very success in prose fiction, as well as the 
failure of his metrical productions, betokens his 
unpoetic nature. He saw, but was not moved 
enough to sing. For there is this marked differ- 
ence between poetic and all other utterance : it 



22 THE POET, OR SEER. 

owes everything to concentration. Deep emotion 
is invariably rapid in its manifestation, as we may 
mark in the case of the ordinary cries of grief ; 
and the temperament of the poet is so intense, so 
keen, that nought but concentrated utterance 
suffices him. Whereas, the true secret of novel- 
writing is the power of expanding. 

The apparence of pure coercive intellect varies, 
of course, according to the nature of the singer. 
In Sappho and Catullus, and all purely lyrical 
Seers, the intellectual note is hardly heard at all ; 
in Ovid and Chaucer, it is heard faintly; in the 
subjective school of writers, such as Shelley, it is 
painfully audible. But even in Shelley, where he 
writes poetry, emotion prevails. " Queen Mab " 
has justly been styled a pamphlet in verse, and 
the "Kevolt of Islam" is only occasionally poetic. 

It follows that we are, on the whole, more 
powerfully moved by purely lyrical utterance than 
by utterances of higher portent. Sappho troubles 
us more than Sophocles, Keats more than Words- 
worth. The personal cry, so sharp, so rapid, so 
genuine, can never fail to find an echo in our 
hearts. The manly exclamation of Burns, — 



THE POET, OR SEER. 23 

For pity's sake, sweet bird, nae mair, 
Or my puir heart is broken ! 

the fetid breath of Sappho, screaming, — 

Cold shiverings o'er me pass, 

Chill sweats across me fly ! 
I am greener than grass, 

And breathless seem to die ! 

the passionate voice of Catullus, — 

Coeli, Lesbia nostra, Lesbia ilia, 

Ilia Lesbia, quam Catullus unam 

Plus quam se, atque suos amavit omnes ! 

the tender lament of Spenser over Sidney, the 
scream of Shelley, the warm sigh of Keats, all 
move deeply in the region of melancholy and tears. 
But the happy calls move us deliciously, although 
truly " our sweetest songs are those that tell of 
saddest thought." The lighter strains of Burns, 
the songs of Tannahill, some verses of Horace, 
others of Ovid, the lyrics of Drayton and George 
Wither, and many other glad poems which will 
occur rapidly to every student, possess the lyrical 
light in great intensity and sweetness. 

But not only in poems professedly lyrical is this 
lyrical light to be found ; it is noticeable in poetry 



24 THE POET, OR SEER. 

of any form, wherever there is extreme emotion, 
and may invariably be looked for as the character- 
istic of the true singer. (Edipus piteonsly ex- 
claiming in his blindness, — 

ri yap e^et fx opdv, 

oto) y opcovn fxrjhev i\v Ihelv y\vicv ; 

Dante, in the great joy of his divinely beloved 
one, feeling his pale studious lips and cheeks turn 
into rose-leaves.* Samson Agonistes groaning, — 

dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon, 
Irrevocably dark, total eclipse, 

Without all hope of day. 

Macbeth' s last twilight murmur, — 

1 have lived long enough ; my way of life 
Is fallen into the sear, the yellow leaf; 
And that which should accompany old age, 
As honour, love, obedience, troop3 of friends, 
I must not look to have ! 

Cleopatra in the heyday of her bliss ; the sad 
shepherd, chasing the footsteps of his love, and 
warbling in tuneful ecstasy, — 

* Purgatory, xxx. 



THE POET, OR SEER. 25 

Here she was wont to go ! and here ! and here ! 
Just where those daisies, pinks, and violets grow : 
The world may find the spring by following her, 
For other print her airy steps ne'er left ; 
Her treading would not bend a blade of grass, 
Or shake the downy blow-ball from his stalk ; 
But like the soft west wind she shot along, 
And where she went the flowers took thickest root, 
As she had sow'd them with her odorous foot. 

And Bernardo Cenci, in the horror and anguish 
of that last parting, screaming, — 

O life ! O world ! 
Cover me ! let me be no more ! To see 
That perfect mirror of pure innocence 
Wherein I gazed, and grew happy and good, 
Shiver'd to dust ! To see thee, Beatrice, 
Who made all lovely thou didst look upon — 
Thee, light of life, dead, dark ! While I say " sister," 
To hear I have no sister ; and thou, mother, 
Whose love was a bond to all our loves, — 
Dead ! the sweet bond broken ! 

These utterances, one and all, sad or glad, are 
essentially lyrical, only differing from the first 
class of lyric utterances in belonging to fictitious 
personages, not to the writer. Borneo and Juliet 
swarms with lyrics ; every great play of Shake- 
speare is more or less full of them . They betoken 



26 THE POET, OR SEER. 

the true dramatic force, and are less distinct in 
the lesser dramatist. They are plentiful in Beau- 
mont and Fletcher, in Ford, in Webster; less 
plentiful in Massinger ; scarcely audible at all in 
Shirley and Ben Jonson. Where they should 
appear in the bombastic tragedies of Dryden, 
rhetoric and rhodomontade appear instead ; and 
to come down to modern times, where shall we 
look for the lyrical light in the pretentious ten- 
tatives of Sheridan Knowles and Johanna Baillie ? 
If these tentatives sometimes rise to dignity of 
movement, that is the most which can be said of 
them. We have powerful emotional situations, 
and no emotion. 

It is here that all professed " imitations " of 
the classics fail. They reproduce the repose so 
admirably, as in many cases to send the reader 
to sleep. But we search in vain in them for the 
representation of the great fires, the burning pas- 
sions, of the originals.* Insensibly, as has been 

* The " Philoctetes" of Mr. William Lancaster is to my 
mind a fine attempt at classic reproduction. It is very 
noble in parts. Mr. Swinburne's "Atalanta" is also fine, 
but it seems, on the whole, less sincere. 



THE POET, OR SEER. 27 

shrewdly remarked, we derive our notions of 
Greek art from Greek sculpture, and forget that 
although calm evolution was rendered necessary 
by the requirements of the great amphitheatre, it 
was no calm life, no dainty passion, no subdued 
woe, that was thus evolved. The lineaments of 
the actor's mask were fixed, but what sort of ex- 
pression did each mask wear ? — the glazed hope- 
less stare of CEdipus, the white horror-stricken 
look of Agamemnon, the stony glitter of the eyes 
of Clytemnestra, the horridly distorted glare of 
the Promethean furies, the sick, suffering, and 
ghastly pale features of Philoctetes. Where was 
the calm here ? The movement of the drama 
was simple and slow, yet there was no calm in 
the heart of the actors, each of whom must fit to 
his mask a monotone — the sneer of Ulysses, the 
blunted groan of Cassandra, the fierce shriek of 
Orestes. The passion and power have made 
these plays immortal; not the slow evolution, 
the necessity of the early stage. They are full 
of the lyrical light. 

But though lyrical emotion is the intensest of all 
written forms of emotion, and must invariably be 



28 THE POET, OR SEER. 

attained wherever poetry interprets the keenest 
Iranian feeling and passion, there are forms of emo- 
tion wherein intellect is not coerced so strongly. 
Two forms may be mentioned, and briefly illus- 
trated here — emotional meditation, and emotional 
ratiocination. Either of these forms is of subtler 
and more mixed quality than the purely lyrical 
form. 

We have numberless examples of emotional 
meditation in Wordsworth ; the thought is strong, 
solemn, unmistakably intellectual, but it is spirit- 
ualized withal by profound feeling. Observe, as 
an example of this, the following portion of the 
" Lines composed a few miles above Tintern 
Abbey:"— 

O sylvan Wye ! thou wanderer through the woods, 

How often has my spirit turned to thee, 

And now, with gleams of half-extinguished thought, 

With many recognitions dim and faint, 

And somewhat of a sad perplexity, 

The picture of the mind revives again : 

While here I stand, not only with the sense 

Of present pleasure, but with pleasing thoughts, 

That in this moment there is life and food 

For future years. And so I dare to hope, 

Though changed, no doubt from what I was when first 



THE POET, OR SEEB. 29 

I came among these hills ; when like a roe 

I bounded o'er the mountains, by the sides 

Of the deep rivers, and the lonely streams, 

Wherever nature led ; more like a man 

Flying from something that he dreads, than one 

Who sought the thing he loved. For Nature then 

(The coarser pleasures of my boyish days, 

And their glad animal movements all gone by,) 

To me was all in all. I cannot paint 

What then I was. The sounding cataract 

Haunted me like a passion : the tall rock, 

The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood, 

Their colours and their forms were then to me 

An appetite ; a feeling and a love 

That had no need of a remoter charm, 

By thought supplied, or any interest 

Unborrowed from the eye. That time is past, 

And all its aching joys are now no more, 

And all its dizzy raptures. Not for this 

Faint I, nor mourn, nor murmur ; other gifts 

Have followed, for such loss, I would believe, 

Abundant recompense. For I have learned 

To look on Nature, not as in the hour 

Of thoughtless youth ; but hearing oftentimes 

The still, sad music of humanity, 

Not harsh nor grating, though of ample power 

To chasten and subdue. And I have felt 

A presence that disturbs me with the joy 

Of elevated thoughts : a sense sublime 

Of something far more deeply interfused, 

Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, 



30 THE POET, OR SEER. 

And the round ocean, and the living air, 
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man, 
A motion and a spirit, that impels 
All thinking things, all objects of all thought, 
And rolls through all things. 

By the side of this exquisite passage, let me 
place another by the same great reflective 
writer, — 

When, as becomes a man who would prepare 
For such an arduous work, I through myself 
Make rigorous inquisition, the report 
Is often cheering ; for I neither seem 
To lack that first great gift, the vital soul, 
Nor general truths, which are themselves a sort 
Of elements and agents, under-powers, 
Subordinate helpers of the living mind. 
Nor am I naked of external things, 
Forms, images, nor numerous other aids 
Of less regard, though won perhaps with toil, 
And needful to build up a poet's praise. 
Time, place, and manners do I seek, and these 
Are found in plenteous store, but nowhere such 
As may be singled out with steady choice ; 
No little band of yet remembered names 
Whom I, in perfect confidence, might hope 
To summon back from lonesome banishment, 
And make them dwellers in the hearts of men 
Now living, or to live in future years. 



THE POET, OR SEER. 31 

Sometimes the ambitious power of choice, mistaking 

Proud spring- tide swellings for a regular sea, 

Will settle on some British theme, some old 

Romantic tale by Milton left unsung ; 

More often turning to some gentle place 

Within the groves of chivalry, I pipe 

To shepherd swains, or seated, harp in hand, 

Amid reposing knights, by a river side 

Or fountain, listen to the grave reports 

Of dire enchantments faced and overcome 

By the strong mind, and tales of warlike feats, 

Where spear encountered spear, and sword with sword 

Fought, as if conscious of the blazonry 

That the shield bore, so glorious was the strife, 

Whence inspiration for a song that winds 

Through ever-changing scenes of votive quest ; 

Throngs to redress, harmonious tribute paid 

To patient courage and umblemished truth, 

To firm devotion, zeal unquenchable, 

And Christian meekness hallowing faithful loves. 

There can be no mistaking the qualities of these 
two passages. The first is poetry, the second is 
the merest prose ; the emotion in the first extract 
so breathes on the thought as to fill it with exqui- 
site music and subtle pleasure not to be coerced 
by meditation. Yet the mood of both is a medita- 
tive mood. In the " Prelude/' from which the above 
extract is taken, and in the " Excursion/' prose and 



32 THE POET, OR SEER. 

poetry alternate most significantly. "Where the 
feeling is vivid and intense, the lines lose all 
that cnmbronsness and pamphletude which have 
blinded so many readers to the real merits of 
these two compositions. 

Wordsworth, too, has passages of emotional 
ratiocination; so also has Milton. Bnt I can 
better illustrate that mood of poetry by two ex- 
tracts from Mr. Browning. The first is from the 
" Epistle of Karsheesh," a poem wherein an Arab 
leech details his encounter, during his travels, 
with the case of Lazarus : — 

He holds on firmly to some thread of life, 

(It is the life to lead perforcedly,) 

Which runs across some vast distracting orb 

Of glory on either side that meagre thread 

Which, conscious of, he must not enter yet, — 

The spiritual life around the earthly life. 

The law of that is known to him as this, 

His heart and brain move there, his feet stay here. 

So is the man perplext with impulses, 

Sudden to start off crosswise, not straight on, 

Proclaiming what is Right and Wrong across, 

And not along this black thread through the blaze. 

" It should be" balked by " here it cannot be," 

And oft the man's soul springs into his face, 

As if he saw again and heard again 



THE POET, OR SEER. 33 

His sage, that bade him " Rise," and he did rise. 

Something, a word, a tick of the blood within 

Admonishes; then back he sinks at once 

To ashes, that was very fire before, 

In sedulous recurrence to his trade 

Whereby he earneth him the daily bread ; 

And studiously the humbler for that pride, 

Professedly the faultier that he knows 

God's secret, while he holds the thread of life. 

Indeed the especial marking of the man 

Is prone submission to the Heavenly will, — 

Seeing it, what is it, and why is it ? 

Sayeth, he will wait patient to the last, 

For that same death which must restore his being 

To equilibrium, body loosening soul, 

Divorced even now by premature full growth. 

The second extract is from " A Death in the 
Desert,," in which John the Evangelist is supposed 
to detail his opinions of his contemporaries, and, in 
a spirit impossibly prophetic, to review the argu- 
ments, in the " Leben Jesu," against miracles : — 

I say that man was made to grow, not stop ; 
That help, he needed once, and needs no more, 
Having grown up but an inch by, is withdrawn : 
For he hath new needs, and new helps to these. 
This imports solely, man should mount on each 
New height in view ; the help whereby he mounts, 
The ladder rung his foot has left, may fall, 
Since all things suffer change save God the Truth. 



34 THE POET, OR SEER. 

Man apprehends Him newly at each stage 

Whereat earth's ladder drops, its service done ; 

And nothing shall prove twice what once was proved. 

You stick a garden plot with ordered twigs 

To show inside lie germs of herbs unborn, 

And check the careless step would spoil their birth ; 

But when herbs wave, the guardian twigs may go, 

Since should ye doubt of virtues, question kinds, 

It is no longer for old twigs ye look, 

Which proved once underneath lay store of seed, 

But to the herb's self, by what light ye boast, 

For what fruit's signs are. This book's fruit is plain, 

Nor miracles need prove it any more. 

Doth the fruit show ? Then miracles bade ware 

At first of root and stem, saved both till now 

From trampling ox, rough boar, and wanton goat. 

What ? Was man made a wheel work to wind up, 

And be discharged, and straight wound up anew ? 

No ! — grown, his growth lasts ; taught, he ne'er forgets : 

May learn a thousand things, not twice the same. 

This might be pagan hearing : now hear mine. 

I say, that as the babe you feed awhile 

Becomes a boy and fit to feed himself, 

So minds at first must be spoon-fed with truth : 

When they can eat, babe's nurture is withdrawn. 

I fed the babe whether it would or no : 

I bid the boy or feed himself or starve. 

I cried once, " That ye may believe in Christ, 

Behold this blind man shall receive his sight !" 



THE POET, OR SEER. 35 

I cry now, " Urgest thou, for I am shrewd 

And smile at stories how Johns word could cure — 

Repeat that miracle and take my faith ? 

I say, that miracle was duly wrought 

When, save for it, no faith was possible. 

Whether a change were wrought i' the shows o' the world, 

Whether the change came from our minds which see 

Of the shows of the world so much as and no more 

Thau God wills for His purpose, — (what do I 

See now, suppose you, there where you see rock 

Kound us?) — I know not; such was the effect, 

So faith grew, making void more miracles 

Because too much ; they would compel, not help. 

I say, the acknowledgment of God in Christ 

Accepted by thy reason, solves for thee 

All questions in the earth and out of it, 

And has so far advanced thee to be wise. 

Wouldst thou unprove this to reprove the proved ? 

In life's mere minute, with power to use that proof, 

Leave knowledge and revert to how it sprung ? 

Thou hast it ; use it and forthwith, or die ! 

Both, these passages are ratiocinative ; yet one 
is a poem, the other not even art. There is a 
flash of ecstasy through the strangely cautious 
description of Karsheesh; every syllable is 
weighed and thoughtful, yet everywhere the lines 
swell into perfect feeling. What shall be said, 
however, to St. John on Strauss ? The violence 



36 THE POET, OR SEER. 

of the imaginative effort to reach St. John's 
views on miracles precludes all emotion ; and 
because there is no emotion, false notes occur in 
every page of the poem. The mind has forced 
itself into a certain attitude, instead of suffering 
itself to be coerced by powerful feeling. 

All these moods, indeed, are but the conse- 
quence of that first mood, wherein the Seer re- 
ceives his impression. If that first mood be too 
purely intellectual, if the Seer be not stirred ex- 
tremely in the process of assimilation, there is a 
certainty that, in spite of clear vision, he will pro- 
duce prose, — as Milton did occasionally, as 
Wordsworth did very often ; as Shakespeare sel- 
dom or never does, and as Keats never did. 

It is certain, then, that clear vision can exist in- 
dependently of emotion; that, however, emotion is 
generally dependent on clear vision ; and that, in 
short, he who sees vividly will in most cases feel 
deeply, but not in all cases. 

Let me mention one more notable case in 
point. I mean Crabbe, — the writer to whom 
modern writers are fondest of alluding, and whom, 
to judge from their blunders concerning him, 



THE POET, OR SEER. 37 

they appear to have been least fond of reading. 
A careful study of his works has revealed to me 
abundant knowledge of life, considerable sym- 
pathy, little or no insight, and no emotion. The 
poems are photographs, not pictures. There is no 
spiritualization, none of that fine selective instinct 
which invariably accompanies deep artistic feel- 
ing. There is too constant a consciousness of the 
" reader," too painful an attempt to gain force by 
means of vivid details. Now, these are not the 
poetic characteristique. The poet derives his 
force from the vividness of the feeling awakened 
by his subject or by his meditation ; he does not 
betray himself by clumsy efforts to gain attention. 
A thought — a touch — a gleam of colour — often 
suffice for him. Whereas Crabbe betrays his 
purely intellectual attitude at every step. He 
describes every cranny of a cottage, every gable, 
every crack in the wall, every kitchen utensil, — 
when his story concerns the soul of the inmate. 
He pieces out a churchyard like so much grocery, 
into so many lives and graves. There is no 
glamour in his eyes when he looks on death ; — he 
is noting the bedroom furniture and the dirty 



38 THE POET, OR SEER. 

sheets. There is no weird music in his ears 
when he stands in a churchyard ; — he is recording 
the quality of the coffin-wood, sliding off into an 
account of the history of the parish beadle, and 
observing whose sheep they are that browse in- 
side the stone wall of the holy place. 

III. I am now led directly to the discussion of 
the third poetic gift, — that of music ; for metrical 
speech is the most concentrated of all speech, and 
proportions itself to the quality of the poetic 
emotion. The most powerful form of emotion is 
lyrical emotion, and the sweetest music is lyrical 
music. 

Poetic vision culminates in sweet sound, — 
always inadequate, perhaps, to represent the 
whole of sight, but interpenetrating through 
the medium of emotion with the entire mystery of 
life. Nothing, indeed, so distinguishes the variety 
of Seers as their melody. It is the souPs perfect 
speech. A break in the harmony not seldom be- 
trays a dizziness of the eyes, an inactivity of the 
heart. A false note betrays the false maestro. A 
cold or forced expression indicates insincerity. 



THE POET, OR SEER. 39 

This music, this last wondrous gift, carries with 
it its own significance and wisdom ; it has a won- 
drous glamour of its own, like the dim light that 
is in falling snow. What exquisite sound is this, 
— where the thought and the emotion die away 
into a murmur like the wash of a summer sea ? — 

Thou wast not born for death, immortal bird ! 

No hungry generations tread thee down ; 
The voice I hear this passing night was heard 

In ancient days by emperor and clown. 
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path 

Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home, 
She stood in tears among the alien corn ; 
The same that oft-times hath 
Charmed magic casements, opening on the foam 
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn. 

Or this, — so perfect in its fleeting rapture : — 

Sound of vernal showers, 

On the twinkling grass, 
Rain -awakened flowers, 

All that ever was 
Joyous, and clear, and sweet, thy music doth surpass. 

Teach us, sprite or bird, 

What sweet thoughts are thine : 

I have never heard 
Praise of love or wine 
That panted forth a rapture so divine ! 



40 THE POET, OR SEER. 

Teach me half the gladness 

That thy brain must know, 
Such harmonious madness 
From my lips would flow, — 
The world should listen then, as I am listening now. 

Or these lines from the "Willow, Willow," of 
Alfred de Musset: — 

Mes chers amis, quand je mourrai, 

Plantez un saule au cimetiere. 

J'aime son feuillage eplore, 

La paleur m'en est douce et chere, 

Et son ombre sera legere 

A la terre ou je dormirai. 

I might fill pages with such quotations. 

The examples just given are examples of purely 
lyrical music, — from its personal nature, the most 
concentrated of all music. For the sake of con- 
trast, now, let me turn to the least concentrated 
form of all, as it is represented in particular 
writers. 

At a first view, it would seem that epic poetry 
is most apt to be unmelodious, on account of the 
diffuse character of its materials as generally 
conceived. But this is an error a priori. The 
materials are not diffuse — they are only large and 



THE POET, OR SEER. 41 

various ; and the music is emotional and concen- 
trated, though not to the extent noticeable in 
less dignified forms of writing. Like dramatic 
poetry, it is all-embracing, and includes in its 
compass all elements, from lyrical feeling to emo- 
tional meditation. The stateliness and constancy 
of its movement do not preclude the sharp 
lyrical cry or the deep meditative pause. Homer 
is the most various of singers. His successors 
are less various, precisely because they are less 
great. Again and again in the sharp solemn 
progress of Dante through Hell are we startled 
by bursts of wilder melody. Even in " Paradise 
Lost" there are some occasions when the deep 
organ bass changes into a scream. 

This is but saying what has been already said 
of lyrical emotion. In brief, lyrical emotion and 
lyrical music as its expression intersect all great 
poetry, whatever its nature ; and the reason need 
not be further explained. Lyric music is the ideal 
speech of intense personal feeling; and that is 
why the exquisite music of Greek tragedy is not 
confined to the choruses. 

But just as all emotion is not markedly per- 



42 THE POET, OR SEER. 

sonal, all music is not lyrical. No music is so ex- 
quisite, so profoundly interesting to men ; but 
there are more complex kinds of expression, 
sounds more variegated and diffuse. Take the 
following passage from the " Paradise Lost " of 
Milton : — 

For now, and since first break of dawn, the Fiend, 

Mere serpent in appearance, forth was come, 

And on his quest, where likeliest he might find 

The only two of mankind, but in them 

The whole included race, his purpos'd prey. 

In bower and field he sought where any kind 

Of grove or garden plot more pleasant lay, 

Their tendence or plantation for delight ; 

By fountain or by shady rivulet 

He sought them both, but wish'd his hnp might find 

Eve separate ; he wish'd but not with hope 

Of what so seldom chanc'd, when to his wish, 

Beyond his hope, Eve separate he spies, 

Ve'iVd in a cloud of fragrance, where she stood, 

Half spy d, so thick the roses blushing round 

About her glowd, oft stooping to support 

Each flower of slender stalk, whose head, though gay 

Carnation, purple, azure, or specked with gold, 

Hung drooping, unsu stain d ; them she upstays 

Gently with myrtle band, mindless the while 

Herself, tho' fairest unsupported flower, 

From her best prop so far, and storm so nigh. 

Nearer he drew, and many a walk travers'd 



THE POET, OR SEER. 43 

Of stateliest covert, cedar, pine, or palm, 
Then voluble and bold, now hid, now seen 
Among thick-woven avborets and flowers 
Imborder'd on each bank, the hand of Eve : 
Spot more delicious than those gardens feign'd, 
Or of reviv'd Adonis, or renown'd 
Alcinous, host of old Laertes' son, 
Or that, not mystic, where the sapient king- 
Held dalliance with his fair Egyptian spouse. 
***** 

So spake the enemy of mankind, enclos'd 
In serpent, inmate bad, and toward Eve 
Address'd his way, not with indented wave, 
Prone on the ground, as since, but on his rear, 
Circular base of rising folds, that towered 
Fold above fold, a surging maze, his head 
Crested aloft, and carbuncle his" eyes ; 
With burnish' d neck of verdant gold, erect 
Amidst his circling spires, that on the grass 
Floated redundant ; pleasing was his shape 
And lovely ; never since of serpent kind 
Lovelier, not those that in Illyria chang'd 
Hermione and Cadmus, or the God 
In Epidaurus ; nor to which transform'd 
Ammonian Jove, or Capitoline was seen 
He with Olympias, this with her who bore 
Scipio the height of Rome. With tract oblique 
At first, as one who sought access, but fear'd 
To interrupt, side-long he works his way : 
As when a ship, by skilful steersman wrought 
Nigh river's mouth, or foreland, where the wind 



44 THE POET, OR SEER. 

Veers oft, as oft so steers and shifts her sail : 
So varied he, and of his tortuous train 
Curl'd many a wanton wreath in sight of Eve, 
To lure her eye ; she, busied, heard the sound 
Of rustling leaves, but minded not, as us'd 
To such disport before her through the field, 
From every beast, more duteous at her call 
Than at Circean call the herd disguis'd. 
He bolder now, uncall'd before her stood, 
But as in gaze admiring : oft he bow'd 
His turret crest, and sleek enamel'd neck, 
Fawning, and lick'd the ground whereon she trod. 

In these exquisite passages of pure description, 
the music perfectly represents the subdued emo- 
tion of the artist ; there is no excitement, but 
vivid presentment ; — and we hear the very move- 
ment of the snake in the involution and pictur- 
esqueness of the lines. I cannot do better than 
place by the side of the above a passage from the 
same great poet, which seems to me especially 
false and inharmonious. It is very brief: — 

The Most High 
Eternal Father, from his secret cloud, 
Amidst in thunder utter' d thus his voice : 
Assembled angels, and ye powers returned 
From unsuccessful charge, be not dismay 'd, 
Nor troubled at these tidings from the earth, 



THE POET, OR SEER. 45 

Which your sincerest care could not prevent, 

Foretold so lately what would come to pass, 

When first this Tempter cross'd the gulf from Hell. 

I told ye then he should prevail and speed 

On his bad errand, man should be seduc'd 

And flatter'd out of all, believing lies 

Against his Maker ; no decree of mine 

Concurring to necessitate his fall, 

Or touch with lightest moment of impulse 

His free will, to her OAvn inclining left 

In even scale. But fall'n he is, and now 

What rests but that the mortal sentence pass 

On his transgression, death denounc'd that day ? 

Which he presumes already vain and void, 

Because not yet inflicted, as he fear'd, 

By some immediate stroke ; but soon shall find 

Forbearance no acquittance ere day end. 

Justice shall not return as bounty scorn'd. 

But whom send I to judge them ? whom but thee 

Vicegerent Son ? to thee I have transferr'd 

All judgment, whether in Heaven, or Earth, or Hell. 

Easy it may be seen that I intend 

Mercy colleague with justice, sending thee 

Man's friend, his mediator, his design'd 

Both ransome and redeemer voluntary, 

And destin'd man himself to judge men fall'n. 

Where is the thunder here ? Where is the solemn 
music ? Instead of awe-inspiring sound, we have 
bald and turgid prose, pieced out clumsily into 



46 THE POET, OR SEER. 

ten- syllable lines, every one of which limps like 
Vnlcan. And why ? Precisely because Milton 
had no spiritual glamour of the Highest, such as 
he had of Satan, for example, — felt no real emo- 
tion in recording His utterances, not even the 
cold meditative emotion which just redeems many 
other parts of " Paradise Lost" from sheer prose. 
He was forcing his mind to hear a voice, attempt- 
ing to represent the utterance of a personality 
ungrasped by his imagination. 

Mere rhetorical music is the least poetic of all, 
although sometimes it has an exceeding charm, as 
in Virgil's famous lines on Marcellus, and much 
of the poetry of rhetorical periods in England. 

Akin to such rhetorical music is the melody of 
the ornate school of writers, singers who mar ex- 
pression by too elaborate effort. Melody, indeed, as 
represented in our true singers, may be divided 
into three kinds, just as the singers themselves may 
be divided into three classes, — the simple, the 
ornate, and the grotesque. The first kind is the 
sweetest and best ; we find it in the great lyrists, 
from Sappho to Burns. Wherever Shelley sings per- 
fectly, as in the " Ode to the Skylark," his music 



THE POET, OR SEER. 47 

loses all its insincerities and affectations. Ornate 
and grotesque music have common faults, — the 
first sacrifices the emotion and meaning by thinning 
and straining them too carefully ; the second loses 
in portent what it gains in mannerism ; and both, 
therefore, betray that dangerous intellectual self- 
consciousness which is a barrier to the production 
of true poetry. A thing cannot be uttered too 
briefly and simply if it is to reach the soul. Music 
that conceals, instead of expressing, thought, 
music that is nothing but sweet sounds and lus- 
cious alliterations, is not poetry. We have the 
sweet sounds everywhere, in fact : in the wash of 
the sea, in the rustle of leaves, in the song of 
birds, in the murmur of happy living things. The 
world is full of them, its heart aches with them ; 
they are mystical and they are homeless. It is 
the office of poetry not barely to imitate them, 
but to link them with the Soul, and by so doing 
to use them as symbols of definite form and 
meaning. They issue from the soul's voice with 
a new wonder in their tones, and are then ready 
to be used as man's perfect language and speech 
to God. 



48 THE POET, OR SEER. 

I need delay little more on this branch of poetic 
power, which, indeed, contains matter for a whole 
volume. It is clear that there is no poetry with- 
out music, but that music varies extremely, ac- 
cording to the quality and intensity of the emotion. 
It may safely be affirmed that no subject is unfit 
for poetic treatment which can be spiritualized to 
this uttermost form of harmonious and natural 
numbers. So closely is melody woven in with and 
representative of emotion and of sight, that it has 
been called the characteristique of the true Seer. 
But let us never lose sight of the fact that music 
is representative, and valuable, not for the sole 
sake of its own sweetness, not for the sole sake 
of the emotion it represents, but mainly and 
clearly valuable for the sake of the poetic thought 
and vision which it brings to completion. There 
may be melodious sound without meaning, fine 
versification without thought; but the most ex- 
quisite melody and versification are those which 
convey the most exquisite forms of poetic vision. 

The tongue must be guided by the eye, if the 
heart is to be reached by the ear ; a series of sighs 
is not a poem. 



THE POET, OR SEER. 49 

Thus, then, have been briefly described the 
qualities of the Poet. He is cardinally the Seer, 
the man who beholds what others behold not, and 
the consequence of his vision is deep emotion 
finding its expression in beautiful music. None 
of the gifts may be dispensed with ; how many a 
pretender, how many a laurel- wearer, must truth 
dethrone, because he lacks eyes. How many 
must be set aside because, in spite of nearly per- 
fect sight, they are too cold and impassive. A 
number, too, must be rejected solely because they 
cannot sing. Southey and Bowles are examples 
of defective vision; Scott and Crabbe are ex- 
amples of defective emotion ; Bacon and Walt 
Whitman are examples of defective music. 

Nor let it be conceived that vision can exist in 
its highest splendour in other men than the born 
Seers. The vision which moves so deeply as to 
turn the very breath of the soul into music is 
equalled by no other vision : its discoveries are the 
most supreme, its significance the most divine. 
The proof of perfect sight is perfect song ; other 
men may see clearly, but the Poets are the dis- 
coverers and watchmen of the world ; they stand 

E 



50 THE POET, OR SEER. 

on an eminence and see far into the nappy valleys. 
There is, indeed, a growing tendency in modern 
life to separate poetry from the poet ; but how 
much is the effect of true song enhanced by the 
solitary singer on the headland, his white robes 
blowing in the wind. On such a headland the 
poet should stand ; his face must shine — bright, 
individual, beautiful — in the midst of his creations. 
It is not entirely by the character of the vision 
that we intuitively recognize a genuine " bit " by 
Milton, or by Dante, or by Burns ; we recognize 
them chiefly by the temper of the emotion, as ex- 
pressed in the music ; and thus, through all great 
and genuine poetry, runs that personal note which 
we call the characteristique of the singer. He who 
is wholly sunk in his art dies with his art. Arts do 
die ; but the true history of literature is the life of 
men. 

The perfectly approven Seer is a sacer vates, a 
priest in the great Temple of Poesy. What are his 
priestly functions ? Is he merely a chaunter in the 
great choirs of nature, — an intoner of responses, — 
a swinger of incense before the altar. TsTay ; his 
office is white and ministerial, fulfilling daily 



THE POET, OR SEER. 51 

functions of divine significance. He is a justifier 
of the ways of God to men. Without that perfect 
sight of his, why should God have selected him ? 
Had not very God selected him, how should he 
be so moved ? Were his voice unmusical, how 
should men heark to his news ? But once invested, 
once clearly persuaded that he is a vates, he finds 
his task become easy to him. He has only to sing 
aloud, and his heart is eased, and he is glad. 
Whether his tidings be sad or merry, he is glad ; 
for he is serving an exquisitely beautiful Master. 
u It is," says Emerson, " dislocation and detach- 
ment from God that makes things ugly." He 
should have said seeming dislocation; no things 
are quite separated from God, and it is the poet's 
office to see the faint lines of communication. 
Those lines detected, the ugly thing is ugly no 
more, but is glorified in the strange and tender 
sweetness issuing from God's eyes. 

And here we have the clue to all these Proteus- 
tricks in which the Seers, from Shakespeare 
downwards, delight. Everything, everybody, 
illustrates the poetic discovery. What the Seer 
beholds as an idea he rushes to corroborate in life, 



52 THE POET, OR SEER. 

and so creates ideals. He is certain of his truth, 
but he is never tired of fresh verification. Again 
and again he approaches us in disguise, — now he 
is one man, then another man, now one woman, 
then another woman ; but the same revelation is 
heard, albeit qualified by the character of the per- 
sonage. By one mouth or another he is bent on 
reaching our souls. That is the dramatic forti- 
tude, the vivida vis of song. But where one Seer 
illustrates his truth by human beings, his brother 
Seer seeks verification in nature, finds sermons 
in stones, and corroborate wisdom in all things. 
While Shakespeare plays Proteus, Wordsworth 
calls hills and woods and streams to witness. 
Seers there are also who gaze at one aspect of 
nature, so lost in looking that they can only cry, 
" See ! see ! " The light streams straight into their 
eyes; they will not stir, lest it die away; — they 
desire no verification beyond the tears on their 
own cheeks, the ache in their own hearts. Such 
an one was David Gray. 

If Hamlet and the great voices cannot reach 
us, cannot stir us, tongues have been given to the 
very hills. If the hills and great forces cannot 



THE POET, OR SEER. 53 

move us, there are Seers translating the voice of 
the running brook. If the running brook and 
gentle powers have no spell upon us, the cry of a 
departing voice shall warn us of our souls. Bless- 
ings even on the childish voices, which utter tiny 
truths in tender syllables, dulcet to ears not over 
keen to the hearing of sounds from the world of 
spirits. 

Let this, moreover, be said, — the Seer never 
lies. He is the man of truth, who cannot disturb 
the order and inferences of things, however much 
he may upset the order and inferences of idealists. 
He will admit no prevarications, no tawdry in- 
sincerities ; he is largely sane and beautiful, and 
need not imitate the devices of the eyeless. 

Is it objected that there have been great Poets 
who have sung things which modern culture ad- 
mits to be false, not true ? But eternal truth is one 
matter, and contemporary truth is another. We 
may not believe now in the terror and vengeful- 
ness of the Lord God Avatar of the Hebrews, 
although that belief dwelt in the thunder-cloud of 
EzekiePs life, and issued from it in a lightning 
flash of prophecy. We may not believe in Dante's 



54 THE POET, OR SEER. 

Inferno, nor in Mahomet's Paradise, nor in the 
seventy angels of a Mussulman, nor in Milton's 
devil, — but these are great, either as contem- 
porary or poetic facts, true spiritually. For it is 
doubtless the business of the Seers to mark the 
great epochs in the march of man ; and on each 
occasion of chronicling, the Seer (being not God, 
but the finite priest) deems in all sincerity that 
the mystery of things is solved, and bursts into 
rapturous song. The voice of Job, in- eternal wail, 
sounds over the tracts of time, sounding the 
weariness of human speculation. The spirit of 
^Eschylus darkly commemorates supernaturalism 
at strife with intellect. Plato is an awful rumour 
of all that the unassisted mind of man can con- 
ceive of immortality. All these and such things 
were new, and true ; and the intensity of the 
contemporary revelation, acting through the splen- 
dour of the eternal truth, has made them endure 
for ever. I pin my faith on the Incarnation, but 
I can admit the spiritual truth of other men who 
deny the Incarnation, — Plotinus, Proclus, Vol- 
taire, Rousseau, and all others. 

For the Temple of jSature, where the poet minis- 



THE POET, OR SEER. 55 

ters, is a wondrous prism, in shining* through 
which the perfect whiteness of God's truth is 
merely turned into its constituent colours. None 
of these colours are false, and none are quite true ; 
here, then, before the prism, all creeds may join 
the Poet. He may enter in, who knows any one of 
the thousand names of God, which are scattered 
for mysterious sounds up and down the earth. 
Within the temple no blasphemy is heard. The 
prismatic radiance of God strikes across the altar. 
A medley of strange tongues is heard on every 
side, — tongues of all lands, from China to Cana of 
Galilee, crying together Ylarrjp 'AvSptLv te Gswv te ! 
One understands as much of the white light as 
the other understands. The fact that each can see, 
is stirred, and sings exquisitely, is at least a sign 
that their contradictions are countenanced by the 
oracle. 

It is in the weird pale circle of the moral law 
that the Seers are bound to have a definite ter- 
minology. No modern Seer, for example, can 
possibly despise the poor, — or sympathize with 
the scholastic views of Socrates' love for Alci- 
biades, — or deny the equality of natural rights. 



56 THE POET, OR SEER. 

His predecessors have not worked for nought. 
Burns has at least taught that the poor are God's 
creatures, full of noble qualities. Wordsworth has 
at least shown wherein the lowly are approven by 
the great combined forces of nature and the 
human heart. Not to carry on these illustrations, 
it is clear that no modern Poet dare lie against 
the accumulated testimony of his predecessors. 
He cannot without gross insincerity (which he 
may call " culture " if he please) write precisely 
as Sophocles wrote, much as he may recognize 
the spiritual truth of such writing ; for he could 
not do so without first believing as Sophocles be- 
lieved, — in which case he would be behind his 
age, and therefore unfit for priestly office at all. 
Nor may he write as Chaucer, or as Milton, or as 
Shelley wrote. We^are beyond that. So far 
from being behind his age, he is far in advance of 
his age.* He is a torch-holder, peering forward 
into the dark To-come ; he is a singer, chaunting 
his new discovery therein. The task, a special 



* It might be curious to note in detail how far Browning's 
orthodoxy is in advance even of our most liberal orthodoxy. 



THE POET, OR SEER. 57 

task, of circulating the old truths, showing them 
in new lights, belong to quite another person, — to 
the reproducer, not to the creator. 

The class of reproducers is very large and very 
useful, consisting of men deficient only in one 
poetic quality, that of perfect individual vision. 
The reproducer feels acutely, sings exquisitely, 
but he is feeling and singing what has been dis- 
covered for him by predecessors. His delicate 
and sensitive eye at once appreciates the beauty 
pointed out to him (provided it be not contempo- 
rary or prospective beauty, which it is the nature of 
his vision not to see at all) ; his exquisite voice 
has been known to phrase the .discovery even 
more charmingly than the Seer himself. The 
mere artist may frequently outvie the Seer in 
technical work. The following little poem by an 
American poet illustrates this point clearly : — 

The morning comes, but brings no sun ; 
The sky with storm is overrun ; 
And here I sit in my room alone, 
And feel, as I hear the tempest moan, 
Like one who hath lost the last and best, 
The dearest dweller from his breast ! 
For every pleasant sight and sound, 
The sorrows of the sky have drowned ; 



58 THE POET, OR SEER. 

The bell within the neighbouring tower, 

Falls blurred and distant through the shower ; 

Look where I will, hear what I may, 

All, all the world seems far away ! 

The dreary shutters creak and swing, 

The windy willows sway and fling 

A double portion of the rain 

Over the weeping window pane. 

But I, with gusty sorrow swayed, 

Sit hidden here, like one afraid, 

And would not on another throw 

One drop of all this weight of woe ! 

All that is exquisite, — more exquisite than 
Wordsworth often is, — yet how instantly do we 
feel that the poem could never have been written 
save under Wordsworth's direct influence. A 
volume might be filled with such examples. A 
notable contemporary work of reproduction is Mr. 
Morris's " Life and Death of Jason/' where 
Homeric force and Chaucerian piteousness are 
mingled into truly beautiful music. This is a case 
of veritable reproduction, really good and notable 
work, as distinguished from those insincere imi- 
tations which now abound in literature. 

Let me not be understood to imply that the 
functions of the Seer do not include artistic and re- 



THE POET, OR SEER. 59 

productive functions ; but in his case, the smaller 
qua lit}' is lost in the greater, — the artist in the 
maker. 

It is necessary, in conclusion, to say a few 
words on the training of the Seer. He must, as 
has been frequently insisted upon, have all the 
culture of his time : — no one-sided culture, — 
none of that elaborate intellectuality which re- 
jects all food but what nourishes self-conscious- 
ness ; but a truer culture, implying simply fami- 
liarity with what has been done by his prede- 
cessors, and absorption of the truths which they 
have introduced into poetic terminology. Phi- 
losophy, history, science, must all be familiar in 
their general bearings. Otherwise, how shall the 
Seer know that he is better than a tinkling cymbal, 
echoing what men have said in the world's morn- 
ing ? Want of culture, properly so called, is at the 
bottom of many poetic failures. In a word, the 
Seer is made as well as born. He must know, as 
well as see. Else he will be taking every cock- 
chafer for an unknown species, or rushing into the 
senate breathless with the discovery that the sun 
is risen. 



60 THE POET, OR SEER. 

Perfect culture is perfect character, — the 
amplest development of natural gift and inspira- 
tion. It means life and strife, and probationary 
years of silence, and love of true literatures, and a 
creed of some sort. In these modern days, it 
must mean, above all, — Charity. ' ' Though I speak 
with tongues of men and of angels, and have not 
charity, I am become as sounding brass or a tink- 
ling cymbal. And though I have the gift of 
prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all 
knowledge ; and though I have all faith, so that I 
could remove mountains, and have not charity, I 
am nothing." With these words written in his 
heart, the Seer need fear no world, even if he is 
compelled to look at souls through the dark glass 
of his university. 




II. 



DAVID GRAY. 



Two friends, in interchange of heart and soul; 
But suddenly Death changed his countenance, 
And graved him in the darkness, far from me. 

The Luggie, by David Gray. 

Quern Di diligunt, adolescens moritur. 



DAVID GRAY. 




ITUATED in a by-road, about a 
mile from the small town of Kirkin- 
tilloch, and eight miles from the city 
of Glasg-ow, stands a cottage one 
storey high, roofed with slate, and surrounded by 
a little kitchen-garden. A whitewashed lobby, 
leading from the front to the back-door, divides 
this cottage into two sections ; to the right, is a 
roof fitted up as a hand-loom weaver's workshop ; 
to the left is a kitchen paved with stone, and 
opening into a tiny carpeted bedroom. 

In the workshop, a father, daughter, and sons 
worked all day at the loom. In the kitchen, a 
handsome cheery Scottish matron busied herself 
like a thrifty housewife, and brought the rest of 
the family about her at meals. All day long the 



64 DAVID GRAY. 

soft hum of the loom was heard in the workshop ; 
but when night came, mysterious doors were 
thrown open, and the family retired to sleep in 
extraordinary mural recesses. 

In this humble home, David Gray, a hand-loom 
weaver, resided for upwards of twenty years, and 
managed to rear a family of eight children — five 
boys and three girls. His eldest son, David, 
author of " The Luggie and other Poems," is the 
hero of the present true history. 

David was born on the 29th of January, 1838. 
He alone, of all the little household, was destined 
to receive a decent education. From early child- 
hood, the dark-eyed little fellow was noted for his 
wit and cleverness; and it was the dream of 
his father's life that he should become a scholar. 
At the parish-school of Kirkintilloch he learned 
to read, write, and cast up accounts, and was, 
moreover, instructed in the Latin rudiments. 
Partly through the hard struggles of his parents, 
and partly through his own severe labours as a 
pupil-teacher and private tutor, he was afterwards 
enabled to attend the classes at the Glasgow 
University. In common with other rough country 



DAVID .GRAY. 65 

lads, who live up dark alleys, subsist chiefly 
on oatmeal and butter forwarded from home, and 
eventually distinguish themselves in the class- 
room, he had to fight his way onward amid 
poverty and privation ; but in his brave pursuit 
of knowledge nothing daunted him. It had been 
settled at home that he should become a minister 
of the Free Church of Scotland. Unfortunately, 
however, he had no love for the pulpit. Early in 
life he had begun to hanker after the delights of 
poetical composition. He had devoured the poets 
from Chaucer to Wordsworth. The yearnings thus 
awakened in him had begun to express themselves 
in many wild fragments — contributions, for the 
most part, to the poet's-corner of a local news- 
paper — " The Glasgow Citizen." 

Up to this point there was nothing extraordi- 
nary in the career or character of David Gray. 
Taken at his best, he was an average specimen of 
the persevering young Scottish student. But his 
soul contained wells of emotion which had not yet 
been stirred to their depths. When, at fourteen 
years of age, he began to study in Glasgow, it 
was his custom to go home every Saturday night 



66 DAVID GRAY. 

in order to pass the Sunday with his parents. 

These Sundays at home were chiefly occupied with 

rambles in the neighbourhood of Kirkintullock ; 

wanderings on the sylvan banks of the Luggie, 

the beloved little river which flowed close to his 

father's door. On Luggieside awakened one day 

the dream which developed all the hidden beauty 

of his character, and eventually kindled all the 

faculties of his intellect. Had he been asked to 

explain the nature of this dream, David would 

have answered vaguely enough, but he would have 

said something to the following effect: "I'm 

thinking none of us are quite contented ; there's a 

climbing impulse to heaven in us all that won't 

let us rest for a moment. Just now I would be 

happy if I hieiv a little more. I'd give ten years 

of life to see Borne, and Florence, and Venice, 

and the grand places of old ; and to feel that I 

wasn't a burden on the old folks. I'll be a great 

man yet ! and the old home, the Luggie and 

Gartshore wood, shall be famous for my sake." 

He could only measure his ambition by the love 

he bore his home. " I was boru, bred, and 

cared for here, and my folk are buried here. I 



DAVID GRAY. 67 

know every nook and dell for miles around, and 
they are all dear to me. My own mother and 
father dwell here, and in my own wee room " (the 
tiny carpeted bedroom above alluded to) " I first 
learned to read poetry. I love my home ; and it 
is for my home's sake that I love fame." 

Nor were that home and its surroundings un- 
worthy of such love. Tiny and unpretending as 
is Luggie stream, upon its banks lie many nooks 
of beauty, bowery glimpses of woodland, shady 
solitudes, places of nestling green for poets made. 
Not far off stretch the Campsie fells, with dusky 
nooks between, where the waterfall and the cas- 
cade make a silver pleasure in the heart of shadow ; 
and beyond, there are dreamy glimpses of the 
misty blue mountains themselves. Away to the 
south-west, lies Glasgow in its smoke, most hideous 
of cities, wherein the very clangour of church- 
bells is associated with abominations. Into the 
heart of that city David was to be slowly drawn, 
subject to a fascination only death could dispel, — 
the desire to make deathless music, and the dream 
of moving therewith the mysterious heart of 
man. 



68 DAVID GBAY. 

At twenty- one years of age, when this dream 
was strong within him, David was a tall young 
man, slightly but firmly built, and with a stoop at 
the shoulders. His head was small, fringed with 
black curly hair. Want of candour was not his 
fault, though he seldom looked one in the face ; 
his eyes, however, were large and dark, full of 
intelligence and humour, harmonizing well with 
the long thin nose and nervous lips. The great 
black eyes and woman's mouth betrayed the 
creature of impulse ; one whose reasoning facul- 
ties were small, but whose temperament was like 
red-hot coal. He sympathized with much that 
was lofty, noble, and true in poetry, and with 
much that was absurd and suicidal in the poet. 
He carried sympathy to the highest pitch of en- 
thusiasm ; he shed tears over the memories 
of Keats and Burns, and he was corybantic in 
his execution of a Scotch " reel." A fine phrase 
filled him with the rapture of a lover. He admired 
extremes — from Rabelais to Tom Sayers. Thirst- 
ing for human sympathy, which lured him in the 
semblance of notoriety, he perpetrated all sorts of 
extravagancies, innocent enough in themselves, 



DAVID GRAY. 69 

but calculated to blind him to the very first prin- 
ciples of art. Yet this enthusiasm, as I have 
suggested, was his safeguard in at least one 
respect. Though he believed himself to be a 
genius, he loved the parental roof of the hand-loom 
weaver. 

And what thought the weaver and his wife of 
this wonderful son of theirs ? They were proud 
of him, proud in a silent undemonstrative fashion ; 
for among the Scottish poor concealment of the 
emotions is held a virtue. During his weekly 
visits home, David was not overwhelmed with 
caresses ; but he was the subject of conversation 
night after night, when the old couple talked in 
bed. Between him and his father there had arisen 
a strange barrier of reserve. They seldom ex- 
changed with each other more than a passing 
word; but to one friend's bosom David would 
often confide the love and tenderness he bore for 
his over-worked, upright parent. When the boy 
first began to write verses the old man affected 
perfect contempt and indifference, but his eyes 
gloated in secret over the poetVcorners of the 
Glasgow newspapers. The poor weaver, though 



70 DAVID GRAY. 

an uneducated man, had a profound respect for 
education and cultivation in others. He felt his 
heart bound with hope and joy when strangers 
praised the boy, but he hid the tenderness of his 
pride under a cold indifference. Although proud 
of David's talent for writing verses, he was afraid 
to encourage a pursuit which practical common 
•sense assured him was mere trifling. At a later 
date he might have spoken out, had not his tongue 
been frozen by the belief that advice from him 
would be held in no esteem by his better edu- 
cated and more gifted son. Thus, the more 
David's indications of cleverness and scholarship 
increased, the more afraid was the old man to 
express his gratification and give his advice. 
Equally touching was the point of view taken by 
David's mother, whose cry was, " The kirk, the 
free kirk, and nothing but the kirk ! n She neither 
appreciated nor underrated the abilities of her 
boy, but her proudest wish was that he should 
become a real live minister, with home and 
" haudin' " of his own. To see David, — " our 
David," — in a pulpit, preaching the Gospel out of 
a big book, and dwelling in a good house to the 
end of his days ! 



DAVID GRAY. 71 

But meantime the boy was swiftly undermining 
all such cherished plans. He had saturated his 
heart and mind with the intoxicating wines of 
poesy, — drunken deep of such syrups as only very 
strong heads indeed can carry calmly. He dif- 
fered from older and harder poets in this only, — 
that he had not the trick of disguising his vanity, 
knew not how to ape humility. The poor lad was 
moved, maddened by the strange divine light in 
his eyes, and he cried aloud : " The beauty of the 
cloudland I have visited ! the ideal love of my 
soul ! " Thus he expressed himself, much to the 
amusement of his hearers. " Solitude," he ex- 
claimed on. another occasion, " and an utter want 
of all physical exercise, are working deplorable 
ravages in my nervous system; the crows'-feet 
are blackening about my eyes, and I cannot think 
to face the sunlight. When I ponder over my 
own inability to move the world, to move one heart 
in it, no wonder that my face gathers blackness. 
Tennyson beautifully and (so far) truly says, that 
the face is 'the form and colour of the mind and 
life/ If you saw me !" His verses written at that 
period, although abounding with echoes of his 



72 DAVID GRAY. 

two pet poets, show great intensity and the 
sweetness of perfect feeling. Some of the lyrics 
in his volume, printed among the Poems Named 
and without Names, belong to this period. His 
productions, however, were for the most part close 
reproductions of the manner of Keats ; and so 
conscious was he of this fact, that in one of these 
pieces he expressly styled himself, " a foster son 
of Keats, the dreamily divine." Wordsworth he 
did not reproduce so much until a later and a 
purer period. One of these unpublished pieces I 
shall quote here, to show that David, even at 
the crude assimilate period, showed " brains " and 
vision noticeable in a youth of twenty. 

Empedocles. 

" He who to be deem'd 
A god, leap'd fondly into iEtna flames, — 
Empedocles." — Milton. 

How, in the crystal smooth and azure sky, 
Droop the clear, living sapphires, tremulous 
And inextinguishably beautiful ! 
How the calm irridescence of their soft 
Ethereal fire contrasts with the wild flame 
Rising from this doomed mountain like the noise 



DAVID GRAY. 73 

Of ocean whirlwinds through the murky air ! 
Alone, alone ! yearning, ambitious ever ! 
Hope's agony ! O, ye immortal gods ! 
Regally sphered in your keen-silvered orbs, 
Eternal, where fled that authentic fire, 
Stolen by Prometheus ere the pregnant clouds 
Rose from the sea, full of the deluge ! Where 
Art thou, white lady of the morning ; white 
Aurora, charioted by the fair Hours 
Through amethystine mists weeping soft dews 
Upon the meadow, as Apollo heaves 
His constellation through the liquid dawn ? 
Give me Tithonus' gift, thou orient 
Undying Beauty ! and my love shall be 
Cherubic worship, and my star shall walk 
The plains of heaven, thy punctual harbinger ! 
O with thy ancient power prolong my days 
For ever ; tear this flesh*thick cursed life 
Enlinking me to this foul earth,'' the home 
Of cold mortality, this nether hell ! 

Rise, mighty conflagrations! and scare wild 
These crowding shadows ! Far on the dim sea 
Pale mariners behold thee, and the sails, 
Shine purpled by thy glare, and the slow oars 
Drop ruby, and the trembling human souls 
Wonder affrighted as their pitchy barks, 
Guided by Syrian pilots, ripple by 
Hailing for craggy Calpe ; O, ye frail 
Weak human souls, I, lone Empedocles, 
Stand here unshivered as a steadfast god, 
Scorning thy puny destinies. 



74 DAVID GRAY. 

I float 
To cloud-enrobed Olympus on the wings 
Of a rich dream, swift as the light of stars, 
Swifter than Zophiel or Mercury 
Upon his throne of adamantine gold. — 
Jove sits superior, while the deities 
Tread delicate the smooth cerulean floors. 
Hebe, (with twin breasts, like twin roes that feed 
Among the lilies), in her taper hand 
Bears the bright goblet, rough with gems and gold, 
Filled with ambrosia to the lipping brim. 
O, love and beauty and immortal life ! 
O, light divine, ethereal effluence 
Of purity ! 0, fragrancy of air, 
Spikenard and calamus, cassia and balm, 
With all the frankincense that ever fumed 
From temple censers swung from pictured roofs. 
Float warmly through the corridors of heaven. 

Hiss ! moan ! shriek ! wreath thy livid serpentine 
Volutions, O ye earth-born flames ! and flout 
The silent skies with strange fire, like a dawn 
Rubific, terrible, a lurid glare ! 
Olympus shrinks beside thee ! I, alone, 
Like deity ignipotent, behold 
Thy playful whirls and thy weird melody 
Hear undismayed. O gods ! shall I go near 
And in the molten horror headlong plunge 
Deathward, and that, serene immortal life 
Discover ? Shriek your hellish discord out 
Into the smoky firmament ! Down roll 



DAVID GRAY. 75 

Your fat bituminous torrents to the sea, 
Hot hissing ! Far away in element 
Untroubled rise the crystal battlements 
Of the celestial mansion, where to be 
Is my ambition ; and far away 
From this dull earth in azure atmospheres 
My star shall pant its silvery lustre, bright 
With sempiternal radiance, voyaging 
On blissful errands the pure marble air. 

O, dominations and life-yielding powers, 
Listen my yearning prayer : To be of ye — 
Of thy grand hierarchy and old race 
Plenipotent, I do a deed that dares 
The draff of men to equal. You have given 
Immortal life to common human men 
Who common deeds achieved ; nay, even for love 
Some goddesses voluptuous have raised 
Weak whiners from this curst sublunar world, 
Pillowed them on snow bosoms in the bowers 
Of Paradise ! And shall Empedocles, 
Who from the perilous grim edge of life 
Leaps sheer into the liquid fire and meets 
Death like a lover, not be sphered and made 
A virtue ministrant ? All you soft orbs 
By pure intelligences piloted, 
Incomprehensibly their glories show 
Approving. O ye sparkle-moving fires 
Of heaven, now silently above the flare 
Of this red mountain shining, which of you 
Shall be my home ? Into whose stellar glow 



76 DAVID GRAY. 

Shall I arrive, bringing delight and life 

And spiritual motion and dim fame ? 

Hiss, fiery serpents ! Your sweet breathings warm 

My face as I approach ye. Flap wild wings, 

Ye dragons ! flaming round this mouth of hell, 

To me the mouth of heaven. 



The influence of Keats soon decayed, and 
calmer influences supervened. He began a play- 
on the Shakespearian model. This ambitious 
effort, however, was soon relinquished for a dearer, 
sweeter task, — the composition of a pastoral poem 
descriptive of the scenery surrounding his home. 
This subject, first suggested to him by a friend 
who guessed his real power, grew upon him with 
wondrous force, till the lines welled into perfect 
speech through very deepness of passion. His 
whole soul was occupied. The pictures that had 
troubled his childhood, the running river, the 
thymy Campsie fells, were now to live again 
before his spirit ; and all the human sweetness and 
trouble, the beloved faces, the familiar human 
figures, stirred to the soft music of a flowing river 
and the distant hum of looms from cottage doors. 
The result was the poem entitled " The Luggie," 



DAVID GRAY. 77 

which gives its name to the posthumous volume, 
and which, though it lacked the last humanizing 
touches of the poet, remains unique in contem- 
porary literature. 

But even while his heart was full of this ex- 
quisite utterance, this babble of green fields and 
silver waters, the influence of cities was growing 
more and more upon him, and poesy was no more 
the quite perfect joy that had made his boyhood 
happy. It was not enough to sing now ; the 
thirst for applause was deepening; and it is not 
therefore extraordinary that even his fresh and 
truthful pastoral shows here and there the hectic 
flush of self-consciousness, — the dissatisfied glance 
in the direction of the public. The natural result 
of this was occasional merry-making, and grog- 
drinking, and beating the big city during the 
dark hours. There was high poetic pleasure in 
singing songs among artizans in familiar public- 
houses, flirting with an occasional milliner, and 
singing her charms in broad Scotch, — even oc- 
casionally coming to fisticuffs in obscure places, 
possibly owing to a hot discussion on the character 
of that demon of religious Scotch artizans, — the 



78 DAVID GRAY. 

poet Shelley. I do not hesitate the least in men- 
tioning these matters, because Gray has been too 
frequently represented as a morbid, unwholesome 
young gentleman, without natural weaknesses — a 
kind of aqueous Henry Kirke White, brandied 
faintly with ambition. He was nothing of the 
kind. He was a young man, as other young men 
are — foolish and wild in his season, though never 
gross or disreputable. The very excess of his 
sensitiveness led him into outbreaks against con- 
vention. While pouring out the sweetness of his 
nature in " The Luggie," he could turn aside again 
and again, and relieve his excitement by such 
doggrel as this, addressed to a companion, — 

Let olden Homer, hoary, 

Sing of wondrous deeds of glory, 

In that ever-burning story, 

Bold and bright, friend Bob ! 
Ou?' theme be Pleasure, careless, 
In all stirring frolics fearless, 
In the vineyard, reckless, peerless, 

Heroes dight, friend Bob ! 

Be it noted, however, that there was in Gray's 
nature a strange and exquisite femininity, — a 
perfect feminine purity and sweetness. Indeed, 



DAVID GRAY. 79 

till the mystery of sex be medically explained, I 
shall ever believe that nature originally meant 
David Gray for a female ; for besides the strangely 
sensitive lips and eyes, he had a woman's shape, — 
narrow shoulders, lissome limbs, and extraordi- 
nary breadth across the hips. 

Early in his teens David had made the ac- 
quaintance of a young man of Glasgow, with 
whom his fortunes were destined to be intimately 
woven. That young man was myself. We spent 
year after year in intimate communion, varying 
the monotony of our existence by reading books 
together, plotting great works, writing extrava- 
gant letters to men of eminence, and wandering 
about the country on vagrant freaks. Whole 
nights and days were often passed in seclusion, in 
reading the great thinkers, and pondering on 
their lives. Full of thoughts too deep for utter- 
ance, dreaming, David would walk at a swift 
pace through the crowded streets, with face bent 
down, and eyes fixed on the ground, taking no 
heed of the human beings passing to and fro. 
Then he would come to me crying, " I have had 
a dream," and would forthwith tell of visionary 



80 DAVID GRAY. 

pictures which had haunted him in his solitary 
walk. This l ' dreaming/' as he called it, con- 
sumed the greater portion of his hours of 
leisure. 

Towards the end of the year 1859, David be- 
came convinced that he could no longer idle 
away the hours of his youth. His work as 
student and as pupil-teacher was ended, and he 
must seek some means of subsistence. He 
imagined, too, that his poor parents threw dull 
looks on the beggar of their bounty. Having 
abandoned all thoughts of entering' into the 
Church, for which neither his taste nor his 
opinions fitted him, what should he do in order 
to earn his daily bread ? His first thought was 
to turn schoolmaster ; but no ! the notion was an 
odious one. He next endeavoured, without suc- 
cess, to procure himself a situation on one of the 
Glasgow newspapers. Meantime, while drifting 
from project to project he maintained a voluminous 
correspondence, in the hope of persuading some 
eminent man to read his poem of " The Luggie." 

Unfortunately, the persons to whom he wrote 
were too busy to pay much attention to the solici- 






DAVID GRAY. 81 

tations of an entire stranger. Repeated disap- 
pointments only increased his self-assertion ; the 
less chance there seemed of an improvement in 
his position, and the less strangers seemed to 
recognize his genius, the more dogged grew his 
conviction that he was destined to be a great 
poet. His letters were full of this conviction. 
To one entire stranger he wrote : " I am a poet ; 
let that be understood distinctly." Again : " I 
tell you that, if I live, my name and fame shall 
be second to few of any age, and to none of 
my own. I speak this because I feel power." 
Again : " I am so accustomed to compare my 
own mental progress with that of such men as 
Shakespeare, Goethe, and Wordsworth, that the 
dream of my life will not be fulfilled, if my fame 
equal not, at least, that of the latter of these 
three !" This was extraordinary language, and 
it is not surprising that little heed was paid to 
it. Let some explanation be given here. "No 
man could be more humble, reverent-minded, 
self-doubting, than David was in reality. In- 
deed, he was constitutionally timid of his own 
abilities, and he was personally diffident. In 

G 



82 DAVID GRAY. 

his letters only lie absolutely endeavoured to 
wrest from his correspondents some recognition 
of his claim to help and sympathy. The moment 
sympathy came, no matter how coldly it might be 
expressed, he was all humility and gratitude. In 
this spirit,, after one of his wildest nights of self- 
assertion, he wrote : " When I read Thomson, I 
despair." Again : " Being bare of all recommenda- 
tions, I lied with my own conscience, deeming 
that if I called myself a great man you were 
bound to believe me." Again : " If you saw me 
you would wonder if the quiet, bashful, boyish- 
looking fellow before you was the author of all 
yon blood and thunder." In a lengthy corres- 
pondence with Mr. Sydney Dobell, who is also 
known as a writer of verse, David wrote wildly 
and boldly enough ; but he was quite ready to 
plead guilty to silliness when the fits were over. 
But the grip of cities was on him, and he was 
far too conscious of outsiders. How sad and 
pitiable sounds the following! "Mark!" he 
cried, " it is not what I have done, or can now 
do, but what I feel myself able and born to do, 
that makes me so selfishly stupid. Your sentence, 



DAVID GRAY. 83 

thrown back to me for reconsideration, would 
certainly seem strange to any one but myself ; but 
the thought that I had so written to you only 
made me the more resolute in my actions, and 
the wilder in my visions. What if I sent the 
same sentence back to you again, with the quiet 
stern answer, that it is my intention to be the 
' first poet of my own age/ and second only 
to a very few of any age. Would you think 
me f mad/ ' drunk/ or an ' idiot/ or my ' self- 
confidence ' one of the c saddest paroxysms V 
When my biography falls to be written, will not 
this same self-confidence be one of the most 
striking features of my intellectual development ? 
Might not a poet of twenty feel great things ? In 
all the stories of mental warfare that I have ever 
read, that mind which became of celestial clear- 
ness and godlike power did nothing for twenty 
years but feel" The hand-loom weaver's son 
raving about his "biography \" The youth that 
could babble so deliriously of green fields looking 
forward to the day when he would be anatomized 
by the small critic and chronicled by the chroni- 
clers of small beer ! It was not in this mood that 



84 DAVID GRAY. 

he wrote his sweetest lines. The world was 
already too much with him. 

Here, if anywhere in his career,, I see signs 
which console me for his bitter suffering and too 
early death; signs that, had he lived, his fate 
might have been an even sadder one. Saint 
Beuve says, as quoted by Alfred de Musset : — 

II existe, en un mot, chez les trois quarts des hommes, 
Un poete mort jeune a, qui Thc-mme survit ! 

A dead young poet whom the man survives ! 
— and dead through that very poison which 
David was beginning to taste. I dare not aver 
that such would have been the result ; I dare not 
say that David's poetic instinct was too weak to 
survive the danger. But the danger existed — 
clear, sparkling, deathly. Had David been hurried 
away to teach schools among the hills, buried 
among associations pure and green as those that 
surrounded his youth and childhood, the poetic 
instinct might have survived and achieved won- 
drous results. But he went southward, — he im- 
bibed an atmosphere entirely unfitted for his soul 
at that period ; and — perhaps, after all, the gods 
loved him and knew best. 

For all at once there flashed upon David and 



DAVID GRAY. 85 

myself the notion of going to London, and taking 
the literary fortress by storm. Again and again 
we talked the project over, and again and again 
we hesitated. In the spring of 1860, we both 
found ourselves without an anchorage ; each found 
it necessary to do something for daily bread. 
For some little time the London scheme had been 
in abeyance ; but, on the 3rd of May, 1860, David 
came to me, his lips firmly compressed, his eyes 
full of fire, saying, " Bob, I'm off to London." 
" Have you funds t" I asked. " Enough for one, 
not enough for two," was the reply. " If you 
can get the money anyhow, we '11 go together." 
On parting, we arranged to meet on the evening 
of the 5th of May, in time to catch the five o'clock 
train. Unfortunately, however, we neglected to 
specify which of the two Glasgow stations was 
intended. At the hour appointed, David left 
Glasgow by one line of railway, in the belief that 
I had been unable to join him, but determined to 
try the venture alone. With the same belief and 
determination, I left at the same hour by the 
other line of railway. We arrived in different 
parts of London at about the same time. Had 
we left Glasgow in company, or had we met im- 



86 DAVID GRAY. 

mediately after our arrival in London, the story 
of David's life might not have been so brief and 
sorrowful. 

Though the month was May, the weather 
was dark, damp, cloudy. On arriving in the 
metropolis, David wandered about for hours, 
carpet-bag in hand. The magnitude of the 
place overwhelmed him ; he was lost in that great 
ocean of life. He thought about Johnson and 
Savage, and how they wandered through London 
with pockets more empty than his own; but 
already he longed to be back in the little carpeted 
bedroom in the weaver's cottage. How lonely 
it seemed ! Among all that mist of human faces 
there was not one to smile in welcome ; and how 
was he to make his trembling voice heard above 
the roar and tumult of those streets ? The very 
policemen seemed to look suspiciously at the 
stranger. To his sensitively Scottish ear the 
lang*uage spoken seemed quite strange and foreign ; 
it had a painful, homeless sound about it that 
sank nervously on the heart-strings. As he 
wandered about the streets he glanced into 
coffee-shop after coffee-shop, seeing "beds" 



DAVID GRAY. 87 

ticketed in each fly-blown window. His pocket 
contained a sovereign and a few shillings, but he 
would need every penny. Would not a bed be 
useless extravagance ? he asked himself. Cer- 
tainly. Where, then, should he pass the night ? 
In Hyde Park ! He had heard so much about 
this part of London that the name was quite 
familiar to him. Yes, he would pass the night in 
the park. Such a proceeding* would save money, 
and be exceedingly romantic ; it would be just 
the right sort of beginning for a poet's struggle 
in London ! So he strolled into the great park, 
and wandered about its purlieus till morning. In 
remarking upon this foolish conduct, one must 
reflect that David was strong, heartsome, full of 
healthy youth. It was a frequent boast of his 
that he scarcely ever had a day's illness. Whether 
or not his fatal complaint was caught during this 
his first night in London is uncertain, but some 
few days afterwards David wrote thus to his 
father: " By-the-bye, I have had the worst cold 
I ever had in my life. I cannot get it away 
properly, but I feel a great deal better to-day." 
Alas ! violent cold had settled down upon his lungs, 



88 DAVTD GRAY. 

and insidious death was already slowly approach- 
ing him. So little conscious was he of his danger, 
however, that I find him writing to a friend : 
" What brought me here ? God knows, for I 
don't. Alone in such a place is a horrible thing. 
. . . People don't seem to understand me. . . . 
Westminster Abbey ; I was there all day yester- 
day. If I live I shall be buried there — so help 
me God ! A completely denned consciousness of 
great poetical genius is my only antidote against 
utter despair and despicable failure." 

I suppose his purposes in coming to Babylon 
were about as definite as my own had been, 
although he had the advantage of being qualified 
as a pupil teacher. We tossed ourselves on the 
great waters as two youths who wished to learn 
to swim, and trusted that by diligent kicking we 
might escape drowning. There was the prospect 
of getting into a newspaper office. Again, there 
was the prospect of selling a few verses. Thirdly, 
if everything failed, there was the prospect of get- 
ting into one of the theatres as supernumeraries.* 

* Each of the friends, indeed, unknown to each other, 
actually applied for such a situation ; and one succeeded. 



DAVID GRAY. 89 

Beyond all this, there was of course the dim 
prospect that London would at once, and with 
acclamations, welcome the advent of true genius, 
albeit with seedy garments and a Scotch accent. 
It doubtless never occurred to either that besides 
mere " consciousness" of power, some other things 
were necessary for a literary struggle in London 
— special knowledge, capability of interesting 
oneself in trifles, and the pen of a ready writer. 
What were David's qualifications for a fight in 
which hundreds miserably fail year after year ? 
Considerable knowledge of Greek, Latin, and 
French, great miscellaneous reading, a clerkly 
handwriting, and a bold purpose. Slender 
qualifications, doubtless, but while life lasted, 
there was hope. 

We did not meet until upwards of a week after 
our arrival in London, though each had soon been 
apprised of the other's presence in the city. 
Finally we came together. David's first impulse 
was to describe his lodgings, situated in a by- 
street in the Borough. ( ' A cold, cheerless bed- 
room, Bob ; nothing but a blanket to cover me. 
For God's sake get me out of it!" We were 



90 DAVID GRAY. 

walking side by side in the neighbourhood of the 
New Cut , looking about us with curious puzzled 
eyes, and now and then drawing- each other's 
attention to sundry objects of interest. " Have 
you been well V 3 I inquired. " First-rate/' 
answered David, looking as merry as possible. 
ISTor did he show any indications whatever of ill- 
ness ; he seemed hopeful, energetic, full of health 
and spirits ; his sole desire was to change his 
lodging. It was not without qualms that he sur- 
veyed the dingy, smoky neighbourhood where I 
resided. The sun was shedding dismal crimson 
light on the chimney-pots, and the twilight was 
slowly thickening. We climbed up three flights 
of stairs to my bedroom; dingy as it was, this 
apartment seemed, in David's eyes, quite a palatial 
sanctum ; and it was arranged that we should 
take up our residence together. As speedily as 
possible I procured David's little stock of luggage ; 
then, settled face to face as in old times, we made 
very merry. 

My first idea, on questioning David about his 
prospects, was that my friend had had the best of 
luck. You see, the picture drawn on either side 



DAVID GRAY. 91 

was a golden one ; but the brightness soon melted 
away. It turned out that David, on arriving in 
London, had sought out certain gentlemen whom 
he had formerly favoured with his correspondence, 
among others Mr. Eichard Monckton Mimes, now 
Lord Houghton. Though not a little astonished 
at the appearance of the boy-poet, Mr. Milnes 
had received him kindly, assisted him to the best 
of his power, and made some work for him in the 
shape of manuscript-copying. The same gentle- 
man had also used his influence with literary 
people, — to very little purpose, however. The 
real truth turned out to be that David was dis- 
appointed and low-spirited. (( It's weary work, 
Bob ; they don't understand me ; I wish I was 
back in Glasgow." It was now that David told 
me all about that first day and night in London, 
and how he had already begun a poem about 
' c Hyde Park ; " how Mr. Milnes had been good 
to him, had said that he was " a poet/' but had 
insisted on his going back to Scotland and be- 
coming a minister. David did not at all like the 
notion of returning home. He thought he had 
every chance of making his way in London. 



92 DAVID GRAY. 

About this time he was bitterly disappointed by 
the rejection of " The Luggie " by Mr. Thackeray, 
to whom Mr. Milnes had sent it, with a recom- 
mendation that it should be inserted in the 
" Cornhill Magazine." 

Lord Houghton briefly and vividly describes 
his intercourse with the young poet in London. 
He had written to Gray strongly urging him 
not to make the hazardous experiment of a 
literary life, but to aim after a professional in- 
dependence. "A few weeks afterwards," he 
writes, u I was told that a young man wished to 
see me, and when he came into the room I at once 
saw that it could be no other than the young 
Scotch Poet. It was a light, well-built, but some- 
what stooping figure, with a countenance that at 
once brought strongly to my recollection a cast of 
the face of Shelley in his youth, which I had seen 
at Mr. Leigh Hunt's. There was the same full 
brow, out-looking eyes, and sensitive melancholy 
mouth. He told me at once that he had come to 
London in consequence of my letter, as from the 
tone of it he was sure I should befriend him. I 
was dismayed at this unexpected result of my 



DAVID GRAY. 93 

advice, and could do no more than press him to re- 
turn home as soon as possible. I painted as darkly 
as I could the chances and difficulties of a literary 
struggle in the crowded competition of this great 
city, and how strong a swimmer it required to be 
not to sink in such a sea of tumultuous life. c No, 
he would not return/ I determined in my own 
mind that he should do so before I myself left 
town for the country, but at the same time I 
believed that he might derive advantage from a 
short personal experience of hard realities. He 
had confidence in his own powers, a simple cer- 
tainty of his own worth, which I saw would keep 
him in good heart and preserve him from base 
temptations. He refused to take money, saying 
he had enough to go on with ; but I gave him 
some light literary work, for which he was very 
grateful. When he came to me again, I went 
over some of his verse with him, and I shall not 
forget the passionate gratification he showed when 
I told him that, in my judgment, he was an un- 
deniable poet. After this admission he was ready 
to submit to my criticism or correction, though 
he was sadly depressed at the rejection of one of 



94 DAVID GRAY. 

his poems, over which he had evidently spent 
much labour and care, by the editor of a distin- 
guished popular periodical, to whom I had sent 
it with a hearty recommendation. His, indeed, 
was not a spirit to be seriously injured by a tem- 
porary disappointment; but when he fell ill so 
soon afterwards, one had something of the feeling 
of regret that the notorious review of Keats 
inspires in connection with the premature loss of 
the author of ' Endymion/ It was only a few 
weeks after his arrival in London, that the poor 
boy came to my house apparently under the in- 
fluence of violent fever. He said he had caught 
cold in the wet weather, having been insufficiently 
protected by clothing; but had delayed coming 
to me for fear of giving me unnecessary trouble. 
I at once sent him back to his lodgings, which 
were sufficiently comfortable, and put him under 
good medical superintendence. It soon became 
apparent that pulmonary disease had set in, but 
there were good hopes of arresting its progress. 
I visited him often, and every time with increasing 
interest. He had somehow found out that his 
lungs were affected, and the image of the destiny 
of Keats was ever before him." 






DAVin GRAY. 95 

It has been seen that Mr. Milnes was the first to 
perceive that the young adventurer was seriously 
ill. After a hurried call on his patron one day in 
May, David rejoined me in the near neighbour- 
hood. " Milnes says I'm to go home and keep 
warm, and he'll send his own doctor to me." This 
was done. The doctor came, examined David's 
chest, said very little, and went away, leaving 
strict orders that the invalid should keep within 
doors, and take great care of himself. Neither 
David nor I liked the expression of the doctor's 
face at all. 

It soon became evident that David's illness was 
of a most serious character. Pulmonary disease 
had set in > medicine, blistering 1 , all the remedies 
employed in the early stages of his complaint, 
seemed of little avail. Just then David read the 
" Life of John Keats," a book which impressed 
him with a nervous fear of impending dissolution. 
He began to be filled with conceits droller than 
any he had imagined in health. " If I were to 
meet Keats in heaven," he said one day, " I 
wonder if I should know his face from his pic- 
tures ? " Most frequently his talk was of labour 
uncompleted, hope deferred; and he began to 



96 DAVID GRAY. 

pant for free country air. " If I die," he said on 
a certain occasion, " I shall have one consolation, — 
Milnes will write an introduction to the poems " 
At another time, with tears in his eyes, he re- 
peated Burns' s epitaph. Now and then, too, he 
had his fits of frolic and humour, and would laugh 
and joke over his unfortunate position. It cannot 
be said that Mr. Milnes and his friends were at 
all lukewarm about the case of their young friend ; 
on the contrary, they gave him every practical 
assistance. Mr. Milnes himself, full of the most 
delicate sympathy, trudged to and fro between 
his own house and the invalid's lodging ; his 
pockets laden with jelly and beef- tea, and his 
tongue tipped with kindly comfort. Had cir- 
cumstances permitted, he would have taken the 
invalid into his own house. Unfortunately, how- 
ever, David was compelled to remain, in company 
with me, in a chamber which seemed to have 
been constructed peculiarly for the purpose of 
making the occupants as uncomfortable as possible. 
There were draughts everywhere: through the 
chinks of the door, through the windows, down 
the chimney, and up through the flooring. When 



DAVID GRAY. 97 

the wind blew, the whole tenement seemed on 
the point of crumbling to atoms ; when the rain 
fell, the walls exuded moisture; when the sun 
shone, the sunshine only served to increase the 
characteristic dinginess of the furniture. Occa- 
sional visitors, however, could not be fully aware 
of these inconveniences. It was in the night-time, 
and in bad weather, that they were chiefly felt ; 
and it required a few days' experience to test the 
superlative discomfort of what David (in a letter 
written afterwards) styled " the dear old ghastly 
bankrupt garret." His stay in these quarters 
was destined to be brief. Gradually, the invalid 
grew homesick. Nothing would content him 
but a speedy return to Scotland. He was care- 
fully sent off by train, and arrived safely in his 
little cottage-home far north. Here all was un- 
changed as ever. The beloved river was flowing 
through the same fields, and the same familiar 
faces were coming and going on its banks ; but 
the whole meaning of the pastoral pageant had 
changed, and the colour of all was deepening 
towards the final sadness. 

Great, meanwhile, had been the commotion in 

H 



98 DAVID GRAY. 

the handloom weaver's cottage, after the receipt 
of this bulletin : " I start off to-night at five o'clock 
by the Edinburgh and Glasgow Kailway, right on 
to London, in good health and spirits." A great 
cry arose in the household. He was fairly " daft ; " 
he was throwing away all his chances in the world ; 
the verse- writing had turned his head. Father 
and mother mourned together. The former, 
though incompetent to judge literary merit of 
any kind, perceived that David was hot-headed, 
only half- educated, and was going to a place 
where thousands of people were starving daily. 
But the suspense was not to last long. The 
darling son, the secret hope and pride, came 
back to the old people, sick to death. All re- 
buke died away before the pale sad face and 
the feeble tottering body; and David was wel- 
comed to the cottage hearth with silent prayers. 
It was now placed beyond a doubt that the disease 
was one of mortal danger ; yet David, surrounded 
again by his old cares, busied himself with many 
bright and delusive dreams of ultimate recovery. 
Pictures of a pleasant dreamy convalescence in a 
foreign clime floated before him morn and night, 



DAVID GRAY. 99 

and the fairest and dearest of the dreams was 
Italy. Previous to his departure for London he 
had concocted a wild scheme for visiting Florence, 
and throwing himself on the poetical sympathy of 
Robert Browning. He had even thought of en- 
listing" in the English Garibaldian corps, and by 
that means gaining his cherished wish. " How 
about Italy ? " he wrote to me, after returning 
home. " Do you still entertain its delusive 
notions ? Pour out your soul before me ; I am 
as a child." All at once a new dream burst 
upon him. A local doctor insisted that the 
invalid should be removed to a milder climate, 
and recommended Natal. In a letter full of 
coaxing tenderness, David besought me, for the 
sake of old days, to accompany him thither. 
I answered indecisively, but immediately made 
all endeavours to grant my friend's wish. Mean- 
time I received the following : — 

" Merkland, Kirkintollock, 

" 10th November, 1860. 

" Ever Deae Bob, 
" Your letter causes me some uneasiness ; not but 
that your numerous objections are numerous and 

LofC. 



100 DAVID GRAY. 

vital enough, but they convey the sad and firm 
intelligence that you cannot come with me. It 
is absolutely impossible for you to raise a sum 
sufficient ! Now you know it is not necessary 
that I should go to Natal ; nay, I have, in very 
fear, given up the thoughts of it; but we — or 
I — could go to Italy or Jamaica — this latter, as 
I learn, being the more preferable. Nor has 
there been any ' crisis ' come, as you say. I 
would cause you much trouble (forgive me for 
hinting this), but I believe we could be happy as 

in the dear old times. Dr. (whose address 

I don't know) supposes that I shall be able to 
work(?) when I reach a more genial climate; 
and if that should prove the result, why, it is a 
consummation devoutly to be wished. But the 
matter of money bothers me. What I wrote to 
you was all hypothetical, i. e. things have been 
carried so far, but I have not heard whether or 
no the subscription had been gone on with. 
And, supposing for one instant the utterly pre- 
posterous supposition that I had money to carry 
us both, then comes the second objection — your 
dear mother ! I am not so far gone, though 



J) AVID GRAY. 101 

I fear far enough, to ignore that blessed feeling. 
But if it were for your good ? Before God, if I 
thought it would in any way harm your health 
(that cannot be) or your hopes, I would never 
have mooted the proposal. On the contrary, 
I feel from my heart it would benefit you ; and 
how much would it not benefit me ? But I am 
baking without flour. The cash is not in my 
hand, and I fear never will be; the amount I 
would require is not so easily gathered. 

" Dobell * is again laid up. He is at the 
Isle of Wight, at some establishment called the 
Victoria Baths. I am told that his friends deem 
his life in constant danger. He asks for your 
address. I shall send it only to-day; wait until 
you hear what he has got to say. He would 
prefer me to go to Brompton Hospital. I would 

* Sydney Dobell, author of " Balder," " The Roman," &c. 
This gentleman's kindness to David, whom he never saw, 
is beyond all praise. Nor was the invalid ungrateful. 
" Poor, kind, half-immortal spirit here below," wrote 
David, alluding to Dobell, " shall I know thee when we 
meet new-born into eternal existence ? . . . Dear friend 
Bob, did you ever know a nobler ? I cannot get him out of 
my mind. I would write to him daily would it not pest him." 



102 DAVID GRAY. 

go anywhere f or a change. If I don't get money 
somehow or somewhere I shall die of ennui. A 
weary desire for change, life, excitement of every, 
any kind, possesses me, and without you what 
am I ? There is no other person in the world 
whom I could spend a week with, and thoroughly 
enjoy it. Oh, how I desire to smoke a cigar, 
and have a pint and a chat with you. 

" By the way, how are you getting on ? Have 
you lots to do ? and well paid for it ? Or is life 
a lottery with you ? and the tea-caddy a vacuum ? 
and — a snare ? and — a nightmare ? Do you 
dream yet, on your old rickety sofa in the dear 
old ghastly bankrupt garret at No. 66 ? Write 
to yours eternally, „ David Qray „ 

The proposal to go abroad was soon aban- 
doned, partly because the invalid began to evince 
a nervous home-sickness, but chiefly because it 
was impossible to raise a sufficient sum of money. 
Yet be it never said that this youth was denied 
the extremest loving sympathy and care. As 
I look back on those days it is to me a glad 
wonder that so many tender faces, many of them 



DAVID GRAY. 103 

quite strange, clustered round his sick-bed. When 
it is reflected that he was known only as a poor 
Scotch lad, that even his extraordinary lyric faculty 
was as yet only half-guessed, if guessed at all, the 
kindness of the world through his trouble is ex- 
traordinary. Milnes, Dobell, DobelFs lady- friends 
at Hampstead, tired never in devising plans for 
the salvation of the poor consumptive invalid, — 
goodness which sprang from the instincts of the 
heart itself, and not from that intellectual bene- 
volence which invests in kind deeds with a view 
to a bonus from the Almighty. 

The best and tenderest of people, however, can- 
not always agree ; and in this case there was too 
much discussion and delay. Some recommended 
the long sea-voyage; one doctor recommended 
Brompton Hospital; Milnes suggested Torquay 
in Devonshire. Meantime, Gray, for the most 
part ignorant of the discussions that were taking 
place, besought his friends on all hands to come 
to his assistance. Late in November he ad- 
dressed the editor of a local newspaper with 
whom he was personally acquainted, and who 
had taken interest in his affairs : — 



104 DAVID GRAY. 

" I write you in a certain commotion of mind, 
and may speak wrongly. But I write to you be- 
cause I know that it will take much to offend you 
when no offence is meant ; and when the probable 
offence will proceed from youthful heat and frantic 
foolishness. It may be impertinent to address 
you, of whom I know so little, and yet so much ; 
but the severe circumstances seem to justify it. 

" The medical verdict pronounced upon me is 
certain and rapid death if I remain at Merhland. 
That is awful enough, even to a brave man. But 
there is a chance of escape ; as a drowning man 
grasps at a straw I strive for it. Good, kind, 
true Dobell writes me this morning the plans for 
my welfare which he has put in progress, and 
which most certainly meet my wishes. They are 
as follows : Go immediately, and as a guest to the 
house of Dr. Lane, in the salubrious town of 
Richmond ; thence, when the difficult matter of 
admission is overcome, to the celebrated Brompton 
Hospital for chest diseases ; and in the Spring to 
Italy. Of course, all this presupposes the con- 
jectural problem that I will slowly recover. 
' Consummation devoutly to be wished ! ' Now„ 



DAVID GRAY. 105 

you think, or say, what prevents you from taking 
advantage of all these plans ? At once, and with- 
out any squeamishness, money for an outfit. I did 
not like to ask Dob ell, nor do I ask you ; but 
hearing a ' subscription y had been spoken of, I 
urge it with all my weak force. I am not in want 
of an immense sum, but say £12 or £15. This 
would conduce to my safety as far as human means 
could do so. If you can aid me in getting this 
sum, the obligation to a sinking fellow- creature 
will be as indelible in his heart as the moral 
law. 

" I hope you will not misunderstand me. My 
barefaced request may be summed thus : If your 
influence set the affair a-going, quietly and quickly, 
the thing is done, and I am off. Surely I am 
worth £15 ; and for God's sake overlook the 
strangeness and the freedom and the utter im- 
pertinence of this communication. I would be 
off for Richmond in two days, had I the money, 
and sitting here thinking of the fearful proba- 
bilities makes me half-mad." 

It was soon found necessary, however, to act 
with decision. A residence in Kirkintolloch 



106 DAVID GRAY. 

throughout the winter was, on all accounts, to 
be avoided. A lady, therefore, subscribed to 
the Brompton Hospital for chest complaints for 
the express purpose of procuring David admis- 
sion. 

One bleak wintry day, not long after the receipt 
of the above letter, I was gazing out of my lofty 
lodging- window when a startling vision presented 
itself, in the shape of David himself, seated with 
quite a gay look in an open Hansom cab. In a 
minute we were side by side, and one of my first 
impulses was to rebuke David for the folly of ex- 
posing himself during such weather, in such a 
vehicle. This folly, however, was on a parallel 
with David's general habits of thought. Some- 
times, indeed, the poor boy became unusually 
thoughtful, as when, during his illness, he wrote 
thus to me : " Are you remembering that you 
will need clothes ? These are things you take no 
concern about, and so you may be seedy without 
knowing it. By all means hoard a few pounds 
if you can (I require none) for any emergency 
like this. Brush your excellent top-coat ; it is the 
best and warmest I ever had on my back. Mind, 



DAVID GRAY. 107 

you have to pay ready money for a new coat. A 
seedy man will not get on if he requires, like you, 
to call personally on his employers." 

David had come to London in order to go 
either to Brompton or to Torquay, — the hospital 
at which last-named place was thrown open to him 
by Mr. Milnes. Perceiving his dislike for the 
Temperance Hotel, to which he had been con- 
ducted, I consented that he should stay in the 
w ghastly bankrupt garret," until he should depart 
to one or other of the hospitals. It was finally 
arranged that he should accept a temporary in- 
vitation to a hydropathic establishment at Sud- 
brook Park, Eichmond. Thither I at once con- 
veyed him. Meanwhile, his prospects were 
diligently canvassed by his numerous friends. 
His own feelings at this time were well expressed 
in a letter home : " I am dreadfully afraid of 
Brompton ; living among sallow, dolorous, dying 
consumptives is enough to kill me. Here I am 
as comfortable as can be : a fire in my room all 
day, plenty of meat, and good society, — nobody 
so ill as myself; but there, perhaps, hundreds far 
worse (the hospital holds 218 in all stages of the 



108 DAVID GRAY. 

disease ; ninety of them died last report) dying 
beside me, perhaps, — it frightens me." 

Abont the same time he sent me the following, 
containing more particulars : — 

" Sudbrook Park, Kichmond, 
Surrey. 
" My Deae Bob, 

" Your anxiety will be allayed by learning that I 
am little worse. The severe hours of this estab- 
lishment have not killed me. At 8 o' clock in 
the morning a man comes into my bedroom with 
a pail of cold water, and I must rise and get my- 
self soused. This sousing takes place three times 
a day, and Fm not dead yet. To-day I told the 
bathman that I was utterly unable to bear it, and 
refused to undress. The doctor will hear of it ; 
that's the very thing I want. The society here 
is most pleasant. No patient so bad as myself. 
No wonder your father wished to go to the water 
cure for a month or two ; it is the most pleasant, 
refreshing thing in the world. But I am really 
too weak to bear it. Eobert Chambers is here ; 
Mrs. Crowe, the authoress ; Lord Brougham's 



DAVID GRAY. 109 

son-in-law; and at dinner and tea the literary- 
tittle-tattle is the most wonderful yon ever heard. 
They seem to know everything about everybody 

but Tennyson. Major (who has a beautiful 

daughter here) was crowned with a laurel- wreath 
for some burlesque verses he had made and read, 
last night. Of course you know what I am among 
them — a pale cadaverous young person, who sits 
in dark corners, and is for the most part silent ; 
with a horrible fear of being pounced upon by a 
cultivated unmarried lady, and talked to. 

" Seriously, I am not better. When the 
novelty of my situation is gone, won't the old 
days at Oakfield Terrace seem pleasant ? Why 
didn't they last for ever ? 

" Yours ever, 

" David Gray." 

All at once David began, with a delicacy pe- 
culiar to him, to consider himself an unwarrantable 
intruder at Sudbrook Park. In the face of all per- 
suasion, therefore, he joined me in London, whence 
he shortly afterwards departed for Torquay. 

He left me in good spirits, full of pleasant an- 



110 DAVID GRAY. 

ticipations of Devonshire scenery. But the second 
day after his departure he addressed to me a wild 
epistle, dated from one of the Torquay hotels. 
He had arrived safe and sound, he said, and had 
been kindly received by a friend of Mr. Milnes. 
He had at first been delighted with the town, and 
everything in it. He had gone to the hospital, 
had been received by " a nurse of death " (as he 
phrased it) , and had been inducted into the pri- 
vileges of the place ; but on seeing his fellow- 
patients, some in the last stages of disease, he had 
fainted away. On coming to himself he obtained 
an interview with the matron. To his request 
for a private apartment, she had answered that to 
favour him in that way would be to break written 
rules, and that he must content himself with the 
common privileges of the establishment. On 
leaving the matron, he had furtively stolen from 
the place, and made his way through the night to 
the hotel. From the hotel he addressed the 
following terrible letter to his parents : — 

" Torquay, January 6, 1861. 

" Dear Parents, 
c( I am coming home — home-sick. I cannot 



DAVID GRAY. Ill 

stay from home any longer. What's the good 
of me being so far from home, and sick and ill ? 
I don't know whether Fll be able to come back 
— sleeping none at night — crying out for my 
mother, and her so far away. Oh God, I wish I 
were home never to leave it more ! Tell every- 
body that I'm coming back — no better — worse, 
worse. What's about climate — about frost or 
snow or cold weather when one is at home ? I 
wish I had never left it. 

" But how am I to get back without money, 
and my expenses for the journey newly paid yes- 
terday ? I came here yesterday scarcely able to 
walk. how I wish I saw my father's face — 
shall I ever see it ? I have no money, and I 
want to get home, home, home ! What shall I 
do, God ? Father, I shall steal to see you 
again, because I did not use you rightly — my 
conduct to you all the time I was at home makes 
me miserable, miserable, miserable ! Will you 
forgive me ? — do I ask that ? forgiven, forgiven, 
forgiven ! If I can't get money to pay for my box, 
I shall leave box and everything behind. I shall 
try and be at home by Saturday, January 12th. 



112 DAVID GRAY. 

Mind the day — if I am not home — God knows 
where I shall be. I have come through things 
that would make your hearts ache for me — things 
which I shall never tell to anybody but you, and 
you shall keep them secret as the grave. Get 
my own little room ready, quick, quick; have 
it all tidy and clean and cosy against my home- 
coming. I wish to die there, and nobody shall 
nurse me, except my own dear mother, ever, ever 
again. home, home, home ! 

" I will try and write again, but mind the day. 
Perhaps my father will come into Glasgow, if I 
can tell him beforehand how, ivhen, and where I 
shall be. I shall try all I can to let him know. 

" Mind and tell everybody that I am coming 

back, because I wish to be back, and cannot stay 

away. Tell everybody; but I shall come back 

in the dark, because I am so utterly unhappy. 

No more, no more. Mind the day. 

" Yours, 

«D. G. 

"Don't answer — not even think of answering."* 

* While lingering at Torquay, however, his mood be- 
came calmer, and he was able to relieve his overladen mind 



DAVID GRAY. 113 

Before I had time to comprehend the state of 
affairs, there came a second letter, stating that 
David was on the point of starting for London. 
" Every ring at the hotel bell makes me tremble, 
fancying they are coming to take me away by 

in the composition of these lines — deeply interesting, 
apart from their poetic merit. 

HOME SICK. 

Lines written at Torquay, January, 1861. 

Come to me, O my Mother ! come to me, 
Thine own son slowly dying far away ! 
Thro' the moist ways of the wide ocean, blown 
By great invisible winds, come stately ships 
To this calm bay for quiet anchorage ; 
They come, they rest awhile, they go away, 
But, O my Mother, never comest thou ! 
The snow is round thy dwelling, the white snow, 
That cold soft revelation pure as light, 
And the pine-spire is mystically fringed, 
Laced with encrusted silver. Here — ah me ! — 
The winter is decrepit, underborn, 
A leper with no power but his disease. 
Why am I from thee, Mother, far from- thee ? 
Far from the frost enchantment, and the woods 
Jewelled from bough to bough ? Oh home, my home ! 
O river in the valley of my home, 
"With mazy-winding motion intricate, 
I 



114 DAVID GRAY. 

force. Had you seen the nurse ! Oh ! that I 
were back again at home — mother ! mother ! 
mother V* A few hours after I had read these 
lines in miserable fear, arrived Gray himself, pale, 
anxious, and trembling. He flung himself into 
my arms with a smile of sad relief. "Thank 
God \" he cried ; " that's over, and I am here \" 
Then his cry was for home ; he would die if he 
remained longer adrift ; he must depart at once. 
I persuaded him to wait for a few days, and in 
the meantime saw some of his influential friends. 
The skill and regimen of a medical establishment 
being necessary to him at this stage, it was 
naturally concluded that he should go to Bromp- 
ton ; but David, in a high state of nervous ex- 
citement, scouted the idea. Disease had sapped 
the foundations of the once strong spirit. He 
was now bent on returning to the north, and 

Twisting thy deathless music underneath 
The polished ice-work — must I nevermore 
Behold thee with familiar eyes, and watch 
Thy beauty changing with the changeful day, 
Thy beauty constant to the constant change? 

M.S. 






DAVID GRAY. 115 

wrote more calmly to his parents from my 
lodgings : — 

"London, Thursday. 

" My very Dear Parents, 

" Having arrived in London last night, my 
friends have seized on me again, and wish me to 
go to Brompton. But what I saw at Torquay was 
enough, and I will come home, though it should 
freeze me to death. You must not take literally 
what I wrote you in my last. I had just ran away 
from Torquay hospital, and didn't know what to 
do or where to go. But you see I have got to 
London, and surely by some means or other I 
shall get home. I am really home- sick. They 
all tell me my life is not ivorth a farthing candle if 
I go to Scotland in this weather, hut what about 
that. I wish I could tell my father when to come 
to Glasgow, but I can't. If I start to-morrow I 
shall be in Glasgow very late, and what am I to 
do if I have no cash. If he comes into Glasgow 
by the twelve train on Saturday, I may, if 
possible, see him at the train, but I would not 
like to say positively. Surely HI get home 



116 DAVID GRAY. 

somehow. I don't sleep any at night now for 
coughing and sweating — I am afraid to go to 
bed. Strongly hoping to be with you soon. - 
" Yours ever, 

" David Gkay." 

"Home — home — home!" was his hourly cry. jj 
To resist these frantic appeals would have been 
to hasten the end of all. In the midst of winter, 
I saw him into the train at Euston Square. A 
day afterwards, David was in the bosom of his i 
father's household, never more to pass thence 
alive. Not long after his arrival at home, he re- 
pented his rash flight. " I am not at all con- 
tented with my position. I acted like a fool ; 
but if the hospital were the sine qua non again, 
my conduct would be the same." Further, " I j; 
lament my own foolish conduct, but what was , 
that quotation about impellunt in Acheron? It> 
was all nervous impulsion. However, I despair l 
not, and, least of all, my dear fellow, to those 
whom I have deserted wrongfully." 

Ere long, poor David made up his mind that he 
must die; and this feeling urged him to write 






DAVID GRAY. 117 

something which would keep his memory green 
for ever. " I am working away at my old poem, 
Bob; leavening it throughout with the pure 
beautiful theology of Kingsley." A little later : 
f By-the-bye, I have about 600 lines of my poem 
written, but the manual labour is so weakening 
that- 1 do not go on." Nor was this all. In the 
very shadow of the grave, he began and finished 
a series of sonnets on the subject of his own 
disease and impending death. This increased 
literary energy was not, as many people imagined, 
a sign of increased physical strength ; it was 
merely the last flash upon the blackening brand. 
Gradually, but surely, life was ebbing away from 
the young poet. 

In March, 1861, I formed the plan of visiting 
Scotland in the spring, and wrote to David 
accordingly. His delight at the prospect of a 
fresh meeting — perhaps a farewell one — was as 
great as mine. He wrote me the following, and 
burst out into song :* — 

* I subjoin the poem, not only as lovely in itself, but as 
the last sad poetic memorial of our love and union. I find 



118 DAVID GRAY. 

"Merkland, March 12, 1861. 
"My Dear Bob, 
" I am very glad to be able to write you to- 
day. Best assured to find a change in your old 
friend when you come down in April. And do, 
old fellow, let it be the end of April, when the 
evenings are cool and fresh, and these east-winds 
have howled themselves to rest. When I think 
of what a fair worshipful season is before you, I 
advise you to remove to a little room at Hamp- 
stead, where I only wish too, too much to be 

it in his printed volume, among the sonnets entitled, " In 

the Shadows :" — 

Now, while the long-delaying ash assumes 

Its delicate April green, and loud and clear 

Thro' the cool, yellow, mellow twilight glooms, 

The thrush's song enchants the captive ear ; 

Now, while a shower is pleasant in the falling, 

Stirring the still perfume that shakes around ; 

Now that doves mourn, and, from the distance calling, 

The cuckoo answers, with a sovereign sound — 

Come, with thy native heart, O true and tried ! 

But leave all books ; for what with converse high, 

Flavoured with Attic wit, the time shall glide 

On smoothly, as a river floweth by, 

Or as on stately pinion, through the gray 

Evening, the culver cuts his liquid way ! 






DAVID GRAY. 119 

with you. Don't forget to come north since you 
have spoken about it ; it has made me very 
happy. My health is no better, — not having 
been out of my room since I wrote, and for some 
time before. The weather here is so bitterly 
cold and unfavourable, that I have not walked 
100 yards for three weeks. I trust your revivi- 
fying presence will electrify my weary relaxed 
limbs and enervated system. The mind, you 
know, has a great effect on the body. Accept the 
wholesome common place. . . . By- the- way, how 
about Dobell ? Did your mind of itself, or even 
against itself, recognize through the clothes a man 
— a poet ? Young speaks well : — 

i" never bowed but to superior woi'th, 
Nor ever failed in my allegiance there. 

Has he the modesty and make-himself-at-home 
manner of Milnes ?" The remainder of this letter 
is unfortunately lost. 

In April, I saw him for the last time, and heard 
him speak words which showed the abandonment 
of hope. "I am dying," said David, leaning 
back in his arm-chair in the little carpeted bed- 



120 DAVID GRAY. 

room ; " I am dyings and Fve only two things to 
regret : that my poem is not published, and that 
I have not seen Italy." In the endeavour to in- 
spire hope I spoke of the happy past, and of the 
happy days yet to be. David only shook his 
head with a sad smile. " It is the old dream — 
only a dream, Bob — but I am content." He 
spoke of all his friends with tenderness, and of 
his parents with intense and touching love. Then 
it was " farewell \" " After all our dreams of the 
future," he said, " I must leave you to fight 
alone ; but shall there be no more ' cakes and ale * 
because I die ?" I returned to London ; and ere 
long heard that David was eagerly attempting to 
get " The Luggie " published. Delay after delay 
occurred. " If my book be not immediately 
gone on with, I fear I may never see it. Disease 
presses closely on me. . . . The merit of my 
MSS. is very little — mere hints of better things 
— crude notions harshly languaged ; but that 
must be overlooked. They are left not to the 
world (wild thought!), but as the simple, pos- 
sible, sad, only legacy I can leave to those who 
have loved and love me." To a dear friend and 



DAVID GRAY. 121 

fellow poet, William Freeland, then sub-editor of 
the Glasgow Citizen, he wrote at this time : " I 
feel more acutely the approach of that mystic dis- 
solution of existence. The body is unable to 
perform its functions, and like rusty machinery 
creaks painfully to the final crash. . . . About my 
poem, — it troubles me like an ever present demon. 
Some day I'll burn all that I have ever written, — 
yet no ! They are all that remain of me as a living 
soul. Mimes offers £5 towards its publication. 
I shall have it ready by Saturday first." And to 
Freeland, who visited him every week, and 
cheered his latter moments with a true poet's con- 
verse, he wrote out a wild dedication, ending in 
these words : " Before I enter that nebulous un- 
certain land of shadowy notions and tremulous 
wonderings — standing on the threshold of the 
sun and looking back, I cry thee, beloved ! a 
last farewell, lingeringly, passionately, without 
tears." At this period I received the following : — 

" Merldand, N. S., Sunday Evening. 

" Deae, deae Bob, 
" By all means and instantly, ' move in this mat- 



122 DAVID GRAY. 

ter' of my book. Bo you really and without 
any dream-work, think it could be gone about 
immediately ? If not soon I fear I shall never 
behold it. The doctors give me no hope, and with 
the yellowing of the leaf ' changes ' likewise ' the 
countenance ' of your friend. Freeland is in 
possession of the MSS., but before I send them (I 
love them in so great temerity) I would like to 
see, and, if at all possible, revise them. Mean- 
while, act and write. Above all, Bob, give me 
(and my father) no hope unless on sound founda- 
tion. Better that the rekindled desire should 
die than languish, bringing misery. I cannot 
sufficiently impress on you how important this 
' book/ is to me : with what ignoble trembling I 
anticipate its appearance : how I shall bless you 
should you succeed. 

" Do not tempt me with your kindness. The 
family have almost got over the strait, only my 
father being out of work. It is, indeed, a ' golden 
treasury ' you have sent me. Many thanks. My 
only want is new interesting books. I shall 
return it soon when I get Smith. Do not, like 
a good fellow, disappoint an old friend by for- 






DAVID GRAY. 123 

getting to send that work. With what interest 
(thinking on my own probable volume) shall I 
examine the print, &c. I am sure, sure to return it. 

11 When you complain of physical discomfort I 
believe. What is the matter ? Your letters now 
are a mere provoking' adumbration of your con- 
dition. I know positively nothing of you, but 
that you are mentally and bodily depressed, and 
that you will never forget Gray. In God's name 
let us keep together the short time remaining. 

" You tell me nothing ; write sooner too. Re- 
collect I have no other pleasure. How is your 
mother ? and all ? Are your editorial duties op- 
pressive ? Is life full of hope and bright faith, yet, 
yet ? Tell me, Bob, and tell me quickly. 

" What a fair, sad, beautiful dream is Italy ! Do 
you still entertain its delusive motions ? Pour 
your soul before me ; I am as a child. 

" Yours for ever, 

" David Gray." 

Still later, in an even sweeter spirit, he wrote 
to an old schoolmate, Arthur Sutherland, with 
whom he had dreamed many a boyish dream, 



124 DAVID GRAY. 

when they were pupil teachers together at the 
Normal school : — 

" As my time narrows to a completion, you 
grow dearer. I think of you daily with quiet 
tears. I think of the happy, happy days we 
might have spent together at Maryburgh; but 
the vision darkens. My crown is laid in the dust 
for ever. Nameless too ! God, how that troubles 
me ! Had I but written one immortal poem, what 
a glorious consolation ! But this shall be my 
epitaph if I have a gravestone at all, — 

'Twas not a life, 
'Twas but a piece of childhood thrown away. 

dear, dear Sutherland ! I wish I could spend 
two healthy months with you ; we would make an 
effort, and do something great. But slowly, in- 
sidiously, and I fear fatally, consumption is doing 
its work, until I shall be only a fair odorous 
memory (for I have great faith in your affection 
for me) to you — a sad tale for your old age. 

Whom the gods love, die young. 

Bless the ancient Greeks for that comfort. If I 
was not ripe, do you think I would be gathered ? 



DAVID GRAY. 125 

" Work for fame for my sake, dear Sutherland. 
Who knows but in spiritual being I may send 
sweet dreams to you — to advise, comfort, and 
command ! who knows ? At all events, when I 
am mooly, may you be fresh as the dawn. 

" Yours till death, and I trust hereafter too, 

"David Gray." 

At last, chiefly through the agency of the un- 
wearying Dobell, the poem was placed in the hands 
of the printer. On the 2nd of December, 1861, a 
specimen-page was sent to the author. David, 
with the shadow of death even then dark upon 
him, gazed long and lingeringly at the printed 
page. All the mysterious past — the boyish 
yearnings, the flash of anticipated fame, the black 
surroundings of the great city — flitted across his 
vision like a dream. It was " good news," he said. 
The next day the complete silence passed over the 
weaver's household, for David Gray was no more. 
Thus, on the 3rd of December, 1861, in the 
twenty-fourth year of his age, he passed tran- 
quilly away, almost his last words being, " God 
has love, and I have faith." The following epi- 



126 DAVID GRAY. 

taph, written out carefully, a few months before 
his decease, was found among his papers : — 

My Epitaph. 

Below lies one whose name was traced in sand — 

He died, not knowing what it was to live : 

Died while the first sweet consciousness of manhood 

And maiden thought electrified his soul : 

Faint beatings in the calyx of the rose. 

Bewildered reader, pass without a sigh 

In a proud sorrow ! There is life with God, 

In other kingdom of a sweeter air ; 

In Eden every flower is blown. Amen. 

David Gray. 
Sept. 27, 1861. 

Draw a veil over the woe that day in the 
weaver's cottage, the wild broodings over the 
beloved face, white in the sweetness of rest after 
pain. A few days later, the beloved dust was 
shut for ever from the light, and carried a short 
journey, in ancient Scottish fashion, on hand- 
spokes, to the Auld Aisle Burial- Ground, a dull and 
lonely square upon an eminence, bounden by a 
stone wall, and deep with " the uncut hair of 
graves." Here, in happier seasons, had David 
often mused ; for here slept dust of kindred, and 
hither in his sight the thin black line of rude 



DAVID GRAY. 127 

mourners often wended with new burdens. Very 
early, too, he blended the place with his poetic 
dreams, and spoke of it in a sonnet not to be 
found in his little printed volume : — 

Old Aisle. 

Aisle of the dead ! your lonely bell-less tower 
Seems like a soul-less body, whence rebouncfs 

No tones ear-sweetening, as if 'twere to embower 
The Sabbath tresses with its soothing sounds. 

In pity, crumbling aisle, thou lookest o'er 

Your former sainted worshippers, whose bones 
Lie mould'ring 'neath these nettle- girded stones, 

Or 'neath yon rank grave weeds ! Now from afar 

Is seen the sacred heavenward spire, which seems 
An intercessor for the mounds below : 

And doth it not speak eloquent in dreams ? 
In dreams of aged pastors who did go 

Up to the hallowed mount with homely tread : 

While there, old men and simple maids and youths 
Throng lovingly to hear the sacred truths 

In gentle stream poured forth. But, he is dead ; 
And in this hill of sighs he rests unknown, 
As that wild flower that by his grave hath blown. 

Standing on this eminence, one can gaze round 
upon the scenes which it is no exaggeration to 
say David has immortalized in song, — the Luggie 
flowing, the green woods of Gartshore, the smoke 



128 DAVID GRAY. 

curling from the little hamlet of Merkland, and 
the faint blue misty distance of the Campsie Fells. 
The place though a lonely is a gentle and happy 
one, fit for a poet's rest ; and there, while he was 
sleeping sound, a quiet company gathered ere 
long to uncover a monument inscribed with his 
name. The dying voice had been heard. Over 
the grave now stands a plain obelisk, publicly 
subscribed for, and inscribed with this epitaph, 
written by Lord Houghton : — 

THIS MONUMENT OF 

AFFECTION, ADMIRATION, AND REGRET, 

IS ERECTED TO 

DAYID GRAY, 

THE POET OF MERKLAND, 

BY FRIENDS FAR AND NEAR, 

DESIROUS THAT HIS GRAVE SHOULD BE REMEMBERED 

AMID THE SCENES OF HIS RARE GENIUS 

AND EARLY DEATH, 

AND BY THE LUGGIE NOW NUMBERED WITH THE STREAMS 

ILLUSTRIOUS IN SCOTTISH SONG. 
BORN, 29TH JANUARY, 1838 ; DIED, 3RD DECEMBER, 1861. 

Here all is said that should be said ; yet per- 
haps the poet's own sweet epitaph, evidently pre- 
pared with a view to such a use, would have been 
more graceful and appropriate. 



DAVID GRAY. 129 

" Whom the gods love die young/' is no mere 
pagan consolation; it has a tenderness for all 
forms of faith, and even when philosophically 
translated, as by Wordsworth, who said sweetly 
that " the good die first/' it still possesses balm 
for hearts that ache over the departed. That 
the young soul passes away in its strength, in its 
prismatic dawn, with many powers undeveloped, 
yet no power wasted, is the beauty and the pity 
of the thought, the inference of the apotheosis. 
The impulse has been upward, and the gods have 
consecrated the endeavour. The thought hovers 
over the death-beds of Keats and Robert Nicoll ; 
it is repeated even by weary old men over those 
poets' graves. No hope has been disappointed, 
no eye has seen the strong wing grow feeble and 
falter earthward, and the possibility of a future 
beyond our seeing is boundless as the aspiration 
of the spirit which escaped us. " Whom the 
gods love die young," said the Athenians ; and 
" bless the ancient Greeks for that comfort," 
wrote David, with the thin, tremulous, consump- 
tion-wasted hand. Beautiful, pathetically beau- 
tiful, is the halo surrounding the head of a young 



130 DAVID GRAV. 

poet as lie dies. We scarcely mourn him, — our 
souls are so stirred towards the eternal. But 
what comfort may abide when, from the frame 
that still breathes, poesy arises like an exhalation, 
and the man lives on. In life as well as in death 
there is a Plutonian house of exiles, and they 
abandon all hope who enter therein ; and that 
man inhabits the same. How often does this 
horror encounter us in our daily paths? The 
change is rapid and imperceptible. "Without hope, 
without peace, without one glimpse of the glory 
the young find in their own aspirations, the 
doomed one buffets and groans in the dark. 
Which of the gods may he call to his aid ? 
None ; for he believes in none. Better for him, 
a thousand times better, that he slept unknown 
in the shadow of the village where he was born. 
The strong hard scholar, the energetic literary 
man of business has a shield against the demons 
of disappointment, but men like David have no 
such shield. Picture the dark weary struggle 
for bread which must have been his lot had he 
lived. He had not the power to write to order, 
to sell his wits for money , He sleeps in peace. 



DAVID GRAY. 131 

He has taken his unchanged belief in things 
beautiful to the very fountain-head of all beauty, 
and will never know the weary strife, the poig- 
nant heartache of the unsuccessful endeavourers. 
The book of poems written, and the writer laid 
quietly down in the auld aisle burying ground, 
had David Gray wholly done with earth ? No ; 
for he worked from the grave on one who loved 
him with a love transcending that of woman. In 
the weaver's cottage at Merkland subsisted ten- 
der sorrow and affectionate remembrance ; but 
something more. The shadow lay in the cot- 
tage ; a light had departed which would never 
again be seen on sea or land; and David Gray, 
the handloom-weaver, the father of the poet, felt 
that the meaning had departed out of his simple 
life. There was a great mystery. The world 
called his darling son a poet, — and he hardly knew 
what a poet was ; all he did know was that the 
coming of this prodigy had given a new com- 
plexion to all the facts of existence. There was 
a dream-life, it appeared, beyond the work in the 
fields and the loom. His son, whom he had 
thought mad at first, was crowned and honoured 



132 DAVID GRAY. 

for the very things which his parents had thought 
useless. Around hhn, vague, incomprehensible, 
floated a new atmosphere, which clever people 
called poetry ; and he began to feel that it was 
beautiful — the more so, that it was so new and 
wondrous. The fountains of his nature were 
stirred. He sat and smoked before the fire o' 
nights, and found himself dreaming too ! He was 
conscious, now, that the glory of his days was 
beyond that grave in the kirkyard. He was like 
one that walks in a mist, his eyes full of tears. 
But he said little of his griefs, — little, that is to 
say, in the way of direct complaint. " We feel 
very weary now David has gone ! " was all the 
plaint I knew him to utter ; he grieved so silently, 
wondered so speechlessly. The new life, brief 
and fatal, made him wise. With the eager sensi- 
tiveness of the poet himself he read the various 
criticisms on David's book; and so subtle was 
the change in him, that, though he was utterly 
unlearned and had hitherto had no insight what- 
ever into the nature of poetry, he knew by instinct 
whether the critics were right or wrong, and felt 
then suggestions to the very roots of his being. 



DAVID GRAY. 133 

With this old man, in whom I recognized a 
greatness and sweetness of soul that has broad- 
ened my view of God's humblest creatures ever 
since, I kept up a correspondence — at first for 
David's sake, but latterly for my correspondent's 
own sake. His letters, brief and simple as they 
were, grew fraught with delicate and delicious 
meaning; I could see how he marvelled at the 
mysterious light he understood not, yet how fear- 
lessly he kept his soul stirred towards the eternal 
silence where his son was lying. " We feel very 
weary now David has gone ! " Ah, how weary ! 
The long years of toil told their tale now; the 
thread was snapt, and labour was no longer a 
perfect end to the soul and satisfaction to the 
body. The little carpeted bedroom was a prayer- 
place now. The Luggie flowing, the green woods, 
the thymy hills, had become haunted; a voice un- 
heard by other dwellers in the valley was calling, 
calling, and a hand was beckoning ; and tired, 
more tired, dazzled, more dazzled, grew the old 
weaver. The very names of familiar scenes were 
now a strange trouble ; for were not these names 
echoing in David's songs ? Merkland, " the 



134 DAVID GRAY. 

summer woods of dear Gartshire," the " fairy 
glen of Wooilee," Criftin, " with his host of 
gloomy pine-trees," all had their ghostly voices. 
Strange rhymes mingled with the humming of 
the loom. Mysterious " poetry/' which he had 
once scorned as an idle thing, deepened and 
deepened in its fascination for him. All he saw 
and heard meant something strange in rhyme. 
He was drawn along by music, and he could not 
rest. 

Beside him dwelt the mother. Her face was 
quite calm. She had wept bitterly, but her 
heart now was with other sons and daughters. 
David was with God, and the minister said that 
God was good — that was quite enough. None 
of the new light had troubled her eyes. She 
knew that her beloved had made a " heap o 3 
rhyme," — that was all. A good loving lad had 
gone to rest, but there were still bairns left, bless 
God! 

But the old man lingered on, with hunger in 
his heart, wonder in his soul. This could not 
last for ever. In the winter of 1864, he warned 
me that he was growing ill; and although he 



DAVID GRAY. 335 

attributed his illness to cold, his letters showed 
me the truth. There was some physical malady, 
but the aggravating cause was mental. It was 
my duty, however, to do all that could be done 
humanly to save him; and the first thing to 
do was to see that he had those comforts which 
sick men need. I placed his case before Lord 
Houghton ; but generous as that man is, all men 
are not so generous. " It is exceedingly difficult 
to get people to assist a man of genius himself, - " 
wrote Lord Houghton, gloomily ; " they won't 
assist his relations." Lord Houghton, however, 
personally assisted him, and was joined by a 
kind colleague, Mr. Baillie Cochrane. 

I felt then, and I feel now, that the condition 
of the old man was even more deeply affecting 
than the condition of David in his last moments, 
as deserving of sympathy, as universal in its ap- 
peal to human generosity ; and I felt a yearning, 
moreover, to provide for the comfort of David's 
mother, and for the education of David's brothers. 
Who knew but that, among the latter, might be 
another bright intellect, which a little schooling 
might save for the world ? After puzzling myself 



136 DAVID GRAY. 

for a plan, I at last thought that I could attain all 
my wishes by publishing a book to be entitled 
" Memorials of David Gray/' and to contain con- 
tributions from all the writers of eminence whom 
I could enlist in the good cause. Such a thing 
would sell, and might, moreover, be worth buying. 
The fine natures were not slow in responding to 
the appeal, and I mention some names, that they 
may gain honour. Tennyson promised a poem ; 
Browning another ; George Eliot agreed to con- 
tribute; Dickens, because he was too busy to write 
anything more, offered me an equivalent in mo- 
ney. All seemed well, when one or two objections 
were raised on the score of propriety ; and it was 
even suggested, that " it looked like begging for 
the father on the strength of Gray's reputation." 
Confused and perplexed, I determined to refer 
the matter to one whose good sense is as great 
as his heart, but (luckily for his friends) a great 
deal harder. " Should I or should I not, under 
the circumstances, go on with my scheme ? " 
His answer being in the negative, the book 
was not gone on with, and the matter dropped. 

Meantime, the old man was getting worse. 
On the 27th April I received this letter : — 



DAVID GRAY. 137 

"Deab Me. Buchanan, " Merkland. 

" We hope this will find you and Mrs. Buchanan 
in good health. I am not getting any better. 
The cough still continues. However, I rise every 
day a while, but it is only to sit by the fire. 
Weather is so cold I cannot go out, except some- 
times I get out and walks round yard. I am 
not looking for betterness. I have nothing par- 
ticular to say, only we thought you would be 
thinking us ungrateful in not writing soon. 
" I remain, yours ever, 

" David G-eay. 

" I understand there is some movement with 
David's stone* again." 

On the 9th May, he wrote, "1 have Dr. Stewart 
to attend me. He called on Sunday and sounded 
me ; — he says I am a dying man, and dying fast. 
You cannot imagine what a weak person I am ; 
I am nearly bedfast." On the 16th May came 
the last lines I ever received from him. They 
are almost illegible, and their purport prevents 

* The monument, not then erected. 



138 DAVID GRAY. 

me from printing them here. A few days more, 
and the old man was dead. His green grave lies 
in the shadow of the obelisk which stands over 
his beloved son. Father and child are side by 
side. A little cloud, a pathetic mystery, came 
between them in life ; but that is all over. The 
old handloom- weaver, who never wrote a verse, 
unconsciously reached his son's stature some time 
ere he passed away. The mysterious thing called 
" poetry/' which operated such changes in his 
simple life, became all clear at last — in that final 
moment when the world's meanings become 
transparent, and nothing is left but to swoon 
back with closed eyes into the darkness, con- 
fiding in God's mercy, content either to waken 
at His footstool, or to rest painlessly for ever- 
more. 



NOTE AND ADDENDA. 

T the request of many friends, I append 
to the biography of David Gray the two 
poems which have reference to his life and poems, 




DAVID GRAY. 139 

and which are to be found scattered among my 
other writings. The first poem, however, must 
not be read as literally interpreting all the facts 
of Gray's life. It is merely a work of imagination, 
with a true experience for its groundwork. 

I. 
POET ANDKEW. 

O Loom, that loud art murmuring, 
What doth he hear thee say or sing ? 
Thou hummest o'er the dead one's songs, 

He cannot choose but hark, 
His heart with tearful rapture throngs, 

But all his face grows dark. 

O cottage Fire, that burnest bright, 
What pictures sees he in thy light ? 
A city's smoke, a white white face, 

Phantoms that fade and die, 
And last, the lonely burial-place 

On the windy hill hard by. 

IS near a year since Andrew went to sleep — 
A winter and a summer. Yonder bed 
Is where the boy was born, and where he died, 
And yonder o'er the lowland is his grave : 




140 DAVID GRAY. 

The nook of grass and gowans where in thought 
I found you standing at the set o' sun . . . 
The Lord content us — -'tis a weary world. 

These five-and-twenty years Fve wrought and 

wrought 
In this same dwelling ; — hearken ! you can hear 
The looms that whuzzle-whazzle ben the house, 
Where Jean and Mysie, lassies in their teens, 
And Jamie, and a neighbours son beside, 
Work late and early. Andrew who is dead 
Was our first-born ; and when he crying came, 
With beaded een and pale old-farrant face, 
Out of the darkness, Mysie and myse? 
Were young and heartsome ; and his smile, be 

sure, 
Made daily toil the sweeter. Hey, his kiss 
Put honey in the very porridge-pot ! 
His smile strung threads of sunshine on the loom ! 
And when he hung* around his mother's neck, 
He decked her out in jewels and in gold 
That even ladies envied ! . . . Weel ! ... in time 
Came other children, newer gems and gold, 
And Andrew quitted Mysie's breast for mine. 
So years rolled on, like bobbins on a loom ; 



DAVID GRAY. 141 

And Mysie and myseF had work to do, 
And Andrew took his turn among the rest, 
No sweeter, dearer ; till, one Sabbath day, 
When Andrew was a curly-pated tot 
Of sunny summers six, I had a crack 
With Mister Mucklewraith the Minister, 
Who put his kindly hand on Andrew's head, 
Called him a clever wean, a bonnie wean, 
Clever at learning, while the mannikin 
Blushed red as any rose, and peeping up 
Went twinkle-twinkle with his round black een ; 
And then, while Andrew laughed and ran awa', 
The Minister went deeper in his praise, 
And prophesied he would become in time 
A man of mark. This set me thinking, sir, 
And watching, — and the mannock puzzled me. 

Would sit for hours upon a stool and draw 
Droll faces on the slate, while other lads 
Were shouting at their play ; dumbly would lie 
Beside the Lintock, sailing, piloting, 
Navies of docken-leaves a summer day ; 
Had learned the hymns of Doctor Watts by heart, 
And as for old Scots songs, could lilt them a' — 



142 DAVID GRAY. 

From Yarrow Braes to Bonnie Bessie Lee — 
And where he learned them, only Heaven knew ; 
And oft, although he feared to sleep his lane, 
Would cowrie at the threshold in a storm 
To watch the lightning, — as a birdie sits, 
With fluttering fearsome heart and dripping wings, 
Among the branches. Once, I mind it weel, 
In came he, running, with a bloody nose, 
Part tears, part pleasure, to his fluttering heart 
Holding a callow mavis golden-billed, 
The thin white film of death across its een, 
And told us, sobbing, how a neighbour's son 
Harried the birdie's nest, and how by chance 
He came upon the thief beside the burn 
Throwing the birdies in to see them swim, 
And how he fought him, till he yielded up 
This one, the one remaining of the nest ; — 
And ' c the birdie 's dying ! " sobbed he sore, 
' ' The bonnie birdie 's dying ! " — till it died ; 
And Andrew dug a grave behind the house, 
Buried his dead, and covered it with earth, 
And cut, to mark the grave, a grassy turf 
Where blew a bunch of gowans. After that, 
I thought and thought, and thick as bees the 
thoughts 



DAVID GRAY. 143 

Buzzed to the whuzzle- whazzling of the loom — 

I could make naething of the mannikin ! 

But by-and-by, when Hope was making hay, 

And web-work rose, I settled it and said 

To the good wife, " ; Tis plain that yonder lad 

Will never take to weaving — and at school 

They say he beats the rest at all his tasks 

Save figures only : I have settled it : 

Andrew shall be a minister — a pride 

And comfort to us, Mysie, in our age ; 

He shall to college in a year or twa 

(If fortune smiles as now) at Edinglass." 

You guess the wife opened her een, cried " Foosh \" 

And called the plan a silly senseless dream, 

A hopeless, useless castle in the air ; 

But ere the night was out, I talked her o'er, 

And here she sat, her hands upon her knees, 

Glow'ring and hearkening, as I conjured up, 

Amid the fog and reek of Edinglass, 

Life's peaceful gloaming and a godly fame. 

So it was broached, and after many cracks 

With Mister Muckle wraith, we planned it a ; , 

And day by day we laid a penny by 

To give the lad when he should quit the bield. 



144 DAVID GRAY. 

And years wore on ; and year on year was cheered 
By thoughts of Andrew, drest in decent black, 
Throned in a Pulpit, preaching out the Word, 
A house his own, and all the country-side 
To touch their bonnets to him. Weel, the lad 
Grew up among us, and at seventeen 
His hands were genty white, and he was tall, 
And slim, and narrow-shouldered ; pale of face, 
Silent, and bashful. Then we first began 
To feel how muckle more he knew than we, 
To eye his knowledge in a kind of fear, 
As folk might look upon a crouching beast, 
Bonnie, but like enough to rise and bite. 
Up came the cloud between us silly folk 
And the young lad that sat among his Books 
Amid the silence of the night ; and oft 
It' pained us sore to fancy he would learn 
Enough to make him look with shame and scorn 
On this old dwelling. ; Twas his manner, sir ! 
He seldom lookt his father in the face, 
And when he walkt about the dwelling, seemed 
Like one superior ; dumbly he would steal 
To the burnside, or into Lintlin Woods, 
With some new-farrant book, — and when I peeped, 



DAVID GRAY. 145 

Behold a book of jingling-j angling rhyme, 
Fine-written nothings on a printed page ; 
And, pressed between the leaves, a flower per- 
chance, 
Anemone or blue Forget-me-not, 
Pluckt in the grassy woodland. Then I peeped 
Into his drawer, among his papers there, 
And found — you guess ? — a heap of idle rhymes, 
Big-sounding, like the worthless printed book : 
Some in old copies scribbled, some on scraps 
Of writing-paper, others finely writ 
With spirls and flourishes on big white sheets. 
I clenched my teeth, and groaned. The beauteous 

dream 
Of the good Preacher in his braw black dress, 
With house and income snug, began to fade 
Before the picture of a drunken loon 
Bawling out songs beneath the moon and stars, — 
Of poet Willie Clay, who wrote a book 
About King Eobert Bruce, and aye got fu', 
And scattered stars in verse, and aye got fV, 
Wept the world's sins, and then got fu' again, — 
Of Ferguson, the feckless limb o' law, — 
And Robin Burns, who gauged the whisky-casks 

L 



143 DAVID GRAY. 

And brake the seventh commandment. So at once 
I up and said to Andrew, " You're a fool ! 
You waste your time in silly senseless verse, 
Lame as your own conceit : take heed ! take heed ! 
Or, like your betters, come to grief ere long ! " 
But Andrew fmsht and never spake a word, 
Yet eyed me sidelong with his beaded een, 
And turned awa', and, as he turned, his look — 
Half scorn, half sorrow — stang me. After that, 
I felt he never heeded word of ours, 
And though we tried to teach him common-sense 
He idled as he pleased ; and many a year, 
After I spake him first, that look of his 
Came dark between us, and I held my tongue, 
And felt he scorned me for the poetry's sake. 
This coldness grew and grew, until at last 
We sat whole nights before the fire and spoke 
No word to one another. One fine day, 
Says Mister Mucklewraith to me, says he, 
" So ! you've a Poet in your house ! " and smiled ; 
" A Poet ? God forbid ! " I cried ; and then 
It all came out : how Andrew slyly sent 
Verse to the paper ; how they printed it 
In Poets' Corner ; how the printed verse 



DAVID GRAY. 147 

Had ca't a girdle in the callant's head ; 

How Mistress Mucklewraith they thought half daft 

Had cut the verses out and pasted them 

In albums, and had praised them to her friends. 

I said but little ; for my schemes and dreams 

Were tumbling down like castles in the air, 

And all my heart seemed hardening to stone. 

But after that, in secret stealth, I bought 

The papers, hunted out the printed verse, 

And read it like a thief; thought some were good, 

And others foolish havers, and in most 

Saw naething, neither common-sense nor sound — 

Words pottle-bellied, meaningless, and strange, 

That strutted up and down the printed page, 

Like Bailies made to bluster and look big. 

; Twas useless grumbling. All my silent looks 
Were lost, all Mysie's flyting fell on ears 
Choke-full of other counsel ; but we talked 
In bed o' nights, and Mysie wept, and I 
Felt stubborn, wrothful, wronged. It was to be ! 
Butmind you, though we mourned, we ne'er forsook 
The college scheme. Our sorrow, as we saw 
Our Andrew growing cold to homely ways, 



148 DAVID GRAY. 

And scornful of the bield, but strengthened more 
Our wholesome wish to educate the lad, 
And do our duty by him, and help him on 
With our rough hands — the Lord would do the 

rest, 
The Lord would mend or mar him. So at last, 
New-clad from top to toe in home-spun cloth, 
With books and linen in a muckle trunk, 
He went his way to college ; and we sat, 
Mysie and me, in weary darkness here ; 
For though the younger bairns were still about, 
It seemed our hearts had gone to Edinglass 
With Andrew, and were choking in the reek 
Of Edinglass town. 

It was a gruesome fight, 
Both for oursel's at home, and for the boy, 
That student life at college. Hard it was 
To scrape the fees together, but beside, 
The lad was young and needed meat and drink. 
We sent him meal and bannocks by the train, 
And country cheeses ; and with this and that, 
Though sorely pushed, he throve, though now and 
then 



DAVID GRAY. 149 

With empty wame : spinning the siller out 
By teaching grammar in a school at night. 
Whiles he came home : weary old-farrant face 
Pale from the midnight candle ; bring home 
Good news of college. Then we shook awa' 
The old sad load, began to build again 
Our airy castles, and were hopeful Time 
Would heal our wounds. But, sir, they plagued 

me still — 
Some of his ways ! When here, he spent his time 
In yonder chamber, or about the woods, 
And by the waterside, — and with him books 
Of poetry, as of old. Mysel' could get 
But little of his company or tongue ; 
And when we talkt, atweel, a kind of frost, — 
My consciousness of silly ignorance, 
And worse, my knowledge that the lad himsel' 
Felt sorely, keenly, all my ignorant shame, 
Made talk a torture out of which we crept 
With burning faces. Could you understand 
One who was wild as if he found a mine 
Of golden guineas, when he noticed first 
The soft green streaks in a snowdrop's inner leaves ? 
And once again, the moonlight glimmering 



150 DAVID GRAY. 

Through watery transparent stalks of flax ? 
A flower's a flower ! . . . But Andrew snooved 

about, 
Aye finding wonders,, mighty mysteries, 
In things that ilka learless cottar kenned. 
]N"ow, 'twas the falling snow or murmuring rain ; 
Now, 'twas the laverock singing in the sun, 
And dropping slowly to the callow young ; 
Now, an old tune he heard his mother lilt ; 
And aye those trifles made his pallid face 
Flush brighter, and his een flash keener far, 
Than when he heard of yonder storm in France, 
Or a King's death, or, if the like had been, 
A city's downfall. 

He was born with love 
For things both great and small ; yet seemed to 

prize 
The small things best. To me, it seemed indeed 
The callant cared for nothing for itsel', 
But for some special quality it had 
To set him thinking, thinking, or bestow 
A tearful sense he took for luxury. 
He loved us in his silent fashion weel ; 



DAVID GRAY. 151 

But in our feckless ignorance we knew 

'Twas when the humour seized him — with a sense 

Of some queer power we had to waken up 

The poetry — ay, and help him in his rhyme ! 

A kind of patronising tenderness, 

A pitying pleasure in our Scottish speech 

And homely ways, a love that made him note 

Both ways and speech with the same curious joy 

As filled him when he watched the birds and flowers. 

He was as sore a puzzle to us then 
As he had been before. It puzzled us, 
How a big lad, down-cheeked, almost a man, 
Could pass his time in silly childish joys . . . 
Until at last, a hasty letter came 
From Andrew, telling he had broke awa' 
From college, packed his things, and taken train 
To London city, where he hoped (he said) 
To make both fortune and a noble fame 
Through a grand poem, carried in his trunk ; 
How, after struggling on with bitter heart, 
He could no longer bear to fight his way 
Among the common scholars ; and the end 
Bade us be hopeful, trusting God, and sure 



152 DAVID GRAY. 

The light of this old home would guide him still 
Amid the reek of evil. 

Sae it was ! 
We twa were less amazed than you may guess, 
Though we had hoped, and feared, and hoped, sae 

long ! 
But it was hard to bear — hard, hard, to bear ! 
Our castle in the clouds was gone for good ; 
And as for Andrew — other lads had ta'en 
The same mad path, and learned the bitter task 
Of poortith, cold, and tears. She grat. I sat 
In silence, looking on the ruffing fire, 
Where streets and ghaistly faces came and went, 
And London city crumbled down to crush 
Our Andrew ; and my heart was sick and cold. 
Ere long, the news across the country-side 
Speak quickly, like the crowing of a cock 
From farm to farm — the women talkt it o'er 
On doorsteps, o'er the garden rails ; the men 
Got £a' upon it at the public-house, 
And whispered it among the fields at work. 
A cry was quickly raised from house to house, 
That all the blame was mine, and cankered een 



DAVID GRAY. 153 

Lookt cold upon rae, as upon a kind 
Of upstart. u Fie on pride ! " the whisper said, 
The fault was Andrew's less than those who taught 
His heart to look in scorn on honest work, — 
Shame on them ! — but the lad, poor lad, would 

learn ! 
sir, the thought of this spoiled many a web 
In yonder — tingling, tingling, in my ears, 
Until I fairly threw my gloom aside, 
Smiled like a man whose heart is light and young, 
And with a future-kenning happy look 
Threw up my chin, and bade them wait and see . . 
But, night by night, these een lookt London ways, 
And saw my laddie wandering all alone 
'Mid darkness, fog, and reek, growing afar 
To dark proportions and gigantic shape — 
Just as a figure of a sheep-herd looms, 
Awful and silent, through a mountain mist. 

Ye aiblins ken the rest. At first, there came 
Proud letters, swiftly writ, telling how folk 
Now roundly called him " Poet," holding out 
Bright pictures, which we smiled at wearily — 
As people smile at pictures in a book, 



154 DAVID GRAY. 

Untrue but bonnie. Then the letters ceased, 
There came a silence cold and still as frost, — 
We sat and hearkened to our beating hearts, 
And prayed as we had never prayed before. 
Then lastly, on the silence broke the news 
That Andrew, far awa', was sick to death, 
And, weary, weary of the noisy streets, 
With aching head and weary hopeless heart, 
Was coming home from mist and fog and noise 
To grassy lowlands and the caller air. 

'Twas strange, 'twas strange ! — but this, the 

weary end 
Of all our bonnie biggins in the clouds, 
Came like a tearful comfort. Love sprang up 
Out of the ashes of the household fire, 
Where Hope was fluttering like the loose white 

film ; 
And Andrew, our own boy, seemed nearer now 
To this old dwelling an our aching hearts 
Than he had ever been since he became 
Wise with book-learning. With an eager pain, 
I met him at the train and brought him home ; 
And when we met that sunny day in hairst, 



DAVID GRAY. 155 

The ice that long had sundered us had thawed, 

We met in silence, and our een were dim. 

Och, I can see that look of his this night ! 

Part pain, part tenderness — a weary look 

Yearning for comfort such as God the Lord 

Puts into parents' een. I brought him here. 

Gently we set him here beside the fire, 

And spake few words, and hushed the noisy house ; 

Then eyed his hollow cheeks and lustrous een, 

His clammy hueless brow and faded hands, 

Blue veined and white like lily-flowers. The wife 

Forgot the sickness of his face, and moved 

With light and happy footstep but and ben, 

As though she welcomed to a merry feast 

A happy guest. In time, out came the truth : 

Andrew was dying : in his lungs the dust 

Of cities stole unseen, and hot as fire 

Burnt — like a deil's red een that gazed at Death. 

Too late for doctor's skill, though doctor's skill 

We had in plenty ; but the ill had ta'en 

Too sure a grip. Andrew was dying, dying : 

The beauteous dream had melted like a mist 

The sunlight feeds on : a' remaining now 

Was Andrew, bare and barren of his pride, 



156 DAVID GRAY. 

Stark of conceit, a weel-beloved child, 
Helpless to help himself and dearer thus, 
As when his yaumer* — like the corn-craik's cry 
Heard in a field of wheat at dead o' night — 
Brake on the hearkening darkness of the bield. 

And as he nearer grew to God the Lord, 
Nearer and dearer ilka day he grew 
To Mysie and mysel' — our own to love, 
The world's no longer. For the first last time, 
We twa, the lad and I, could sit and crack 
With open hearts — free-spoken, at our ease ; 
I seemed to know as muckle then as he, 
Because I was sae sad. 

Thus grief, sae deep 
It flowed without a murmur, brought the balm 
Which blunts the edge of worldly sense and makes 
Old people weans again. In this sad time, 
We never troubled at his childish ways ; 
We seemed to share his pleasure when he sat 
Listening to birds upon the eaves ; we felt 

* Yaume?\ a child's cry. 



DAVID GRAY. 157 

Small wonder when we found him weeping o'er 
His old torn books of pencilled thoughts and 

verse ; 
And if, outbye, I saw a bonnie flower, 
I pluckt it carefully and bore it home 
To my sick boy. To me, it somehow seemed 
His care for lovely earthly things had changed — 
Changed from the curious love it once had been, 
Grown larger, bigger, holier, peacefuller ; 
And though he never lost the luxury 
Of loving beauteous things for poetry's sake, 
His heart was God the Lord's, and he was calm. 
Death came to lengthen out his solemn thoughts 
Like shadows to the sunset. So no more 
We wondered. What is folly in a lad 
Healthy and hearts ome, one with work to do, 
Befits the freedom of a dying man. . . 
Mother, who chided loud the idle lad 
Of old, now sat her sadly by his side, 
And read from out the Bible soft and low, 
Or lilted lowly, keeking in his face, 
The old Scots songs that made his een so dim. 
I went about my daily work as one 
Who waits to hear a knocking at the door, 



158 DAVID GRAY. 

Ere Death creeps in and shadows those that 

watch ; 
And seated here at e'en i 3 the ingleside, 
I watched the pictures in the fire and smoked 
My pipe in silence ; for my head was fa' 
Of many rhymes the lad had made of old 
(Rhymes I had read in secret, as I said) , 
No one of which I minded till they came 
Unsummoned, murmuring about my ears 
Like bees among the leaves. 

The end drew near. 
Came Winter moaning, and the Doctor said 
That Andrew couldna live to see the Spring ; 
And day by day, while frost was hard at work, 
The lad grew weaker, paler, and the blood 
Came redder from the lung. One Sabbath day — 
The last of winter, for the caller air 
Was drawing sweetness from the barks of trees — 
When down the lane, I saw to my surprise 
A snowdrop blooming underneath a birk, 
And gladly pluckt the flower to carry home 
To Andrew. Ere I reached the bield, the air 
Was thick wi' snow, and ben in yonder room 






DAVID GRAY. 159 

I found him, Mysie seated at his side, 
Drawn to the window in the old arm-chair, 
Gazing wi' lustrous een and sickly cheek 
Out on the shower, that wavered softly down 
In glistening siller glamour. Saying nought, 
Into his hand I put the year's first flower, 
And turned awa' to hide my face ; and he . . 
. . He smiled . . and at the smile, I knew, not why, 
It swam upon us, in a frosty pain, 
The end was come at last, at last, and Death 
Was creeping ben, his shadow on our hearts. 
We gazed on Andrew, called him by his name, 
And touched him softly . . and he lay awhile, 
His een upon the snow, in a dark dream, 
Yet neither heard nor saw ; but suddenly, 
He shook awa' the vision wi' a smile, 
Raised lustrous een, still smiling, to the sky, 
Next upon us, then dropt them to the flower 
That trembled in his hand, and murmured low, 
Like one that gladly murmurs to himseP — 
u Out of the Snow, the Snowdrop — out of Death 
Comes Life ;" then closed his eyes and made a 

moan, 
And never spake another word again. 



160 DAVID GRAY. 

. . And you think weel of Andrew's book ? 

You think 

That folk will love him, for the poetry's sake, 

Many a year to come ? We take it kind 

You speak so weel of Andrew ! — As for me, 

I can make naething of the printed book ; 

I am no scholar, sir, as I have said, 

And Mysie there can just read print a wee. 

Ay ! we are feckless, ignorant of the world ! 

And though 'twere joy to have our boy again 

And place him far above our lowly house, 

We like to think of Andrew as he was 

When, dumb and wee, he hung his gold and gems 

Round Mysie's neck ; or — as he is this night — 

Lying asleep, his face to heaven — asleep, 

Near to our hearts, as when he was a bairn, 

Without the poetry and human pride 

That came between us to our grief, langsyne. 

From " Idyls and Legends of Inverburn" by 
Robert Buchanan. 



DAVID GRAY. 161 

II. 
TO DAVID IN HEAVEN. 



% 



111 



! the slow moon roaming 

Through fleecy mists of gloaming, 
Furrowing with pearly edge the jewel-powdered 
sky! 
Lo, the bridge moss-laden, 
Arched like foot of maiden, 
And on the bridge, in silence, looking upward, 
you and I ! 
Lo, the pleasant season 
Of reaping and of mowing — 
The round still moon above, — beneath, the river 
duskily flowing ! 

ii. 
Violet-coloured shadows, 
Blown from scented meadows, 
Float o'er us to the pine- wood dark from yonder 
dim corn-ridge ; 
The little river gushes 

M 



162 DAVID GRAY. 

Through shady sedge and rushes, 
And gray gnats murmur o'er the pools, beneath 
the mossy bridge ; — 
And you and I stand darkly, 
O'er the keystone leaning, 
And watch the pale mesmeric moon, in the time 
of gleaners and gleaning. 

in. 
Do I dream, I wonder ? 
As, sitting sadly under 
A lonely roof in London, through the grim 
square pane I gaze ? 
Here of you I ponder, 
In a dream, and yonder 
The still streets seem to stir and breathe beneath 
the white moon's rays. 
By the vision cherished, 
By the battle braved, 
Do I but dream a hopeless dream, in the city that 
slew you, David ? 

IV. 

Is it fancy also, 

That the light which falls so 






1 



TO DAVID IN HEAVEN. 163 

Faintly upon the stony street below me as I 
write, 
Near tall mountains passes 
Through churchyard weeds and grasses, 
Barely a mower's mile away from that small 
bridge, to-night ? 
And, where you are lying, — 
Grass and flowers above you — 
Is mingled with your sleeping face, as calm as 
the hearts that love you ? 

v. 
Poet gentle-hearted, 
Are you then departed, 
And have you ceased to dream the dream we loved 
of old so well ? 
Has the deeply cherished 
Aspiration perished, 
And are you happy, David, in that heaven where 
you dwell ? 
Have you found the secret 
We, so wildly, sought for, 
And is your soul enswathed, at last, in the singing 
robes you fought for ? 



164 DAVID GRAY. 



VI. 

In some heaven star-lighted, 
Are you now united 
Unto the poet-spirits that you loved, of English 
race ? 
Is Chatterton still dreaming ? 
And, to give it stately seeming, 
Has the music of his last strong song passed into; 
Keats' s face ? 
Is Wordsworth there ? and Spenser ? 
. Beyond the grave's black portals, 
Can the grand eye of Milton see the glory he sang 
to mortals ? 

VII. 

You at least could teach me, 
Could your dear voice reach me, 
Where I sit and copy out for men my soul's Strang 
speech, 
Whether it be bootless, 
Profitless, and fruitless, — 
The weary aching upward strife to heights we 
cannot reach, 
The fame we seek in sorrow, 



TO DAVID IN HEAVEN. 165 

The agony we forego not, 
The haunting singing sense that makes us climb 
— whither we know not. 



VIII. 

Must it last for ever, 
The passionate endeavour, 
Ay, have ye, there in heaven, hearts to throb and 
still aspire ? 
In the life you know now, 
Rendered white as snow now, 
Do fresher glory-heights arise, and beckon higher 
— higher ? 
Are you dreaming, dreaming, 
Is your soul still roaming, 
Still gazing upward as we gazed, of old in the 
autumn gloaming ? 

IX. 

Lo, the book I hold here, 
In the city cold here ! 
I hold it with a gentle hand and love it as I may ; 
Lo, the weary moments ! 
Lo, the icy comments ! 



166 DAVID GRAY. 

And lo, false Fortune's knife of gold swift-lifted 
up to slay ! 
Has the strife no ending ? 
Has the song no meaning ? 
Linger I, idle as of old, while men are reaping or 
gleaning ? 

x. 
Upward my face I turn to you, 
I long for you, I yearn to you, 
The spectral vision trances me to utt'rance wild 
and weak ; 
It is not that I mourn you, 
To mourn you were to scorn you, 
For you are one step nearer to the beauty singers 



But I want, and cannot see you, 
I seek and cannot find you, 
And, see ! I touch the book of sougs you tenderly 
left behind you ! 

XI. 

Ay, me ! I bend above it, 
With tearful eyes, and love it, 



TO DAVID IN HEAVEN. 167 

With tender hand I touch the leaves, but cannot 
find you there ! 
Mine eyes are haunted only 
By that gloaming sweetly lonely, 
The shadows on the mossy bridge, the glamour in 
the air! 
I touch the leaves, and only 
See the glory they retain not — 
The moon that is a lamp to Hope, who glorifies 
what we gain not ! 

XII. 

The aching and the yearning, 
The hollow undiscerning, 
Uplooking want I still retain, darken the leaves I 
touch — 
Pale promise, with much sweetness 
Solemnizing incompleteness, 
But ah, you knew so little then — and now you 
know so much ! 
By the vision cherished, 
By the battle braved, 
Have you, in heaven, shamed the song, by a 
loftier music, David ? 



1(38 DAVID GRAY. 

XIII. 

I, who loved and* knew you, 
In the city that slew you, 
Still hunger on, and thirst, and climb, proud- 
hearted and alone : 
Serpent-fears enfold me, 
Syren- visions hold me, 
And, like a wave, I gather strength, and gather- 
ing strength, I moan ; 
Yea, the pale moon beckons, 
Still I follow, aching, 
And gather strength, only to make a louder moan, 
in breaking ! 

XIV. 

Though the world could turn from you, 
This, at least, I learn from you : 
Beauty and Truth, though never found, are worthy 
to be sought, 
The singer, upward- springing, 
Is grander than his singing, 
And tranquil self-sufficing joy illumes the dark of 
thought. 
This, at least, you teach me, 



TO DAVID IN HEAVEN. 169 

In a revelation : 
That gods still snatch, as worthy death, the soul 
in its aspiration. 

xv. 
And I think, as you thought, 
Poesy and Truth ought 
Never to lie silent in the singer's heart on earth ; 
Though they be discarded, 
Slighted, unrewarded, 
Though, unto vulgar seeming, they appear of little 
worth, — 
Yet tender brother-singers, 
Young or not yet born to us, 
May seek there, for the singer's sake, that love 
which sweeteneth scorn to us ! 

XVI. 

While I sit in silence, 
Conies from mile on mile hence, 
From English Keats' s Eoman grave, a voice that 
sweetens toil ! 
Think you, no fond creatures 
Draw comfort from the features 



170 DAVID GRAY. 

Of Chatterton, pale Ph'aethon, hurled down to 
sunless soil ? 
Scorched with sunlight lying, 
Eyes of sunlight hollow, 
But, see ! upon the lips a gleam of the chrism of 
Apollo ! 

XVII. 

Noble thought produces 
Noble ends and uses, 
Noble hopes are part of Hope wherever she may 
be, 
Noble thought enhances 
Life and all its chances, 
And noble self is noble song, — all this I learn 
from thee ! 
And I learn, moreover, 
'Mid the city's strife too, 
That such faint song as sweetens Death can sweeten 
the singer's life too ! 

XVIII. 

Lo, my Book ! — I hold it 
In weary hands, and fold it 
Unto my heart, if only as a token I aspire ; 



TO DAVID IN HEAVEN. 171 

And, by song's assistance, 
Unto your dim distance, 
My soul uplifted is on wings, and beckoned higher, 
nigher. 
By the sweeter wisdom 
You return unspeaking, 
Though endless, hopeless, be the search, we exalt 
our souls in seeking. 

XIX. 

Higher, yet, and higher, 
Ever nigher, ever nigher, 

To the glory we conceive not, let us toil and strive 
and strain !- — 
The agonized yearning, 
The imploring and the burning, 

Grown awfuller, in tenser, at each vista we attain, 
And clearer, brighter, growing, 
Up the gulfs of heaven wander, 

Higher, higher yet, and higher, to the Mystery 
we ponder ! 

xx. 
Yea, higher yet, and higher, 
Ever nigher, ever nigher, 



172 DAVID GRAY. 

While men grow small by stooping and the reaper 
piles the grain, — 
Can it then be bootless, 
Profitless and fruitless, 
The weary aching upward search for what we never 
gain ? 
Is there not awaiting 
Rest and golden weather, 
Where, passionately purified, the singers may meet 
together ? 

XXI. 

Up ! higher yet, and higher, 
Ever nigher, ever nigher, 
Through voids that Milton and the rest beat still 
with seraph- wings ; 
Out through the great gate creeping 
Where God hath put his sleeping — 
A- dewy cloud detaining not the soul that soars and 
sings; 
Up ! higher yet, and higher 
Fainting nor retreating, 
Beyond the sun, beyond the stars, to the far bright 
realm of meeting ! 



TO DAVID IN HEAVEN. 173 

XXII. 

Mystery ! Passion ! 
To sit on earth, and fashion, 
What floods of music visibled may fill that fancied 
place ! 
To think, the least that singeth, 
Aspireth and upspringeth, 
May weep glad tears on Keats's breast and look in 
Milton's face ! 
When human power and failure 
Are equalized for ever, 
And the one great Light that haloes all is the 
passionate bright endeavour ! 

XXIII. 

But ah, that pale moon roaming 
Through fleecy mists of gloaming, 
Furrowing with pearly edge the jewel-powdered 
sky, 
And ah, the days departed 
With your friendship gentle-hearted, 
And ah, the dream we dreamt that night, together, 
you and I ! 



174 



DAVID GRAY. 



Is it fashioned wisely, 
To help us or to blind us, 
That at each height we gain we turn, and behold 
a heaven behind us ? 

Undertones, by Robert Buchanan. 




III. 



THE STUDENT, AND HIS VOCATION. 



THE STUDENT AND HIS 
VOCATION. 




T is not so easy to be alone as it used 
to be. Fresh dropt, as it were, from 
the moon, and amazed at the hum and 
roar of innumerable mortals similarly 
bewildered, the mortal traveller finds it difficult 
now to creep into a cave or to pitch a tent in the 
desert. Even if beneficent Providence feed and 
clothe him- free of trouble, the temptation to 
action is almost certain to be too strong for him ; 
when everybody is fighting, he is indeed cold- 
blooded who does not seek a share of the blows 
and the glory. He is pulled into the public 
vortex — fights, debates, writes, studies by all 
means to outwrestle his neighbours and to get a 
head higher. Entering the city gates, greeted 
N 



178 THE STUDENT AND 

by a wail as shrill and sad as if lie were pene- 
trating the middle circle of the Inferno, his heart is 
stirred and he becomes a philanthropist. Ob- 
serving the phenomena of society and the inex- 
orable laws of trade, he turns political economist. 
Marking the tendency of the race to equalization, 
observing how much may be done even by tall 
talk to commeasure freedom, he mounts the 
rostrum and delivers political oracles. But he 
is never alone. Once caught by the whirligig, he 
is kept dancing round and round. He is doomed 
to be a public man, big or little, one of the crowd, 
— doomed in this fatal way, that once committed 
to combined action with masses, no other action 
contents him. With sword or with pen, in the 
senate or in the pulpit, as constitution-conserver or 
liberal elector, he is for ever on the move. Is it 
to be wondered at that he soon loses his identity ? 
The man is lost in the vocation ; we know him no 
longer by his face and voice, but by his badge of 
office . He is a wave in the great waters . His busi- 
ness is public, and he is coerced by his associates. 

The collective public opinion of this crowd of i 
travellers is what may be termed " contemporary 



HIS VOCATION. 179 

truth. " This, of necessity, changes from gene- 
ration to generation. From Hindooism to the 
pantheism of Greece and Rome, from that to the 
Catholicism of the early Church, from that to the 
fierce bigotry of the later Church, from that to 
the sour eclecticism of France, contemporary truth 
changes and changes. That which is true to 
Julius Caesar is smiled at by Augustus ; what the 
cowls approve the eighth Henry soon proves to 
be ephemeral, until Henry, in his turn, is shown 
to have only just begun the work of alteration. 
It is the same in all other movements not re- 
ligious. Now contemporary truth is for mo- 
narchies, then for republics one and indivisible ; 
now it insists upon the encyclopaedia as the 
embodiment of all knowledge, again it indig- 
nantly tears the encyclopaedia and burns the 
e&i.gy of Yoltaire. Noisy, vehement, dogmatic, 
yet earnest, beat the waters of opinion on the 
heavenly shore, where the sun comes and goes, 
and the stars keep vigil in the intervals of his 
coming and going; and contemporary truth is 
the barest froth thereof. The crowd roars, and 
the angels are smiling at its oracles. 



180 THE STUDENT AND 

Evermore , however, in all periods, in all cli- 
mates and countries, there have been individuals 
who cared neither to lead nor to be led, who grew 
weary of action, however irresponsible, and who, 
in a supreme moment, have crept away from the 
mass and sought solitude. Yet in no selfish or 
exclusive spirit have they sought to be alone, — 
in no scorn of their fellows, in no fear of blows 
or pain, in no wish to secure a monopoly of the 
grand shows which nature makes in solitary 
places. Spiritual astronomers, they discovered 
early that it was their business to regard the 
heavens, not to delve in the earth, nor build 
cities, nor preach in the market-place. Star- 
gazers, they speculate from what star they and 
the other travellers have fallen. The tumult, the 
glory, the wonder of the world electrifies, instead 
of disturbing, their contemplation. These men are 
the Students, — pale men, with melancholy eyes, 
which seem to suffer from the burning light they 
shed on fellow-mortals. 

What, then, do the Students seek, turning 
their eyes to these transmortal directions, troubled 
evermore by the passage of wondrous lights across 



HIS VOCATION. 181 

the heavenly shore ? They are seeking, not con- 
temporary, but " eternal truth/' — the law beyond 
local law, the religion beyond creeds, the holy 
government beyond governments which come 
and go. They are noting, in a word, not merely 
the phenomena which are constantly changing, 
but the truths which regulate such phenomena, 
which are evermore recurring with fresh force and 
novelty, and which may fairly be regarded as un- 
changeable. Plato, the grand great brow, gleam- 
ing divinely in the pale pure light of pagan sunset ; 
Spinoza, shading his wondrous eyes under heavy 
Jewish eyelids from a perfect glare and agony of 
light ; Comte, consuming a frail body in the dis- 
tress of too fixed a contemplation : these, all such 
as these, and the host of lesser labourers, consti- 
tute the class of Students, embracing in one fine 
brotherhood metaphysicians, spiritualists, posi- 
tivists, men of science, poets, painters, and musi- 
cians. However much they differ in most 
matters, however opposite they may be in per- 
sonal hopes and aspirations, they have one great 
point of contact : — their vocation is the study of 
eternal, not contemporary truth, and, to perfect 



182 THE STUDENT AND 

that vocation, they find it imperatively necessary 
to live alone. 

Thus, here and there, by the busy wayside, 
the earthly traveller catches glimpses of faint foot- 
paths, some leading to places of nestling green, 
others winding up to the mountain-peaks, others 
conducting to the brink of waste waters peopled 
by the phantoms of the clouds. These paths wind 
to the nooks where the students dwell, hearing 
faintly from afar the tramp of busy feet and the 
cry of voices. Not always, however, do the 
Students remain apart. Ever and anon, at the 
point where the footpath joins the highway, 
appears a pale face, and a white hand is uplifted 
demanding silence. The Student has stept down 
with a message. Ere that message can be heard, 
the crowd must still itself and pause, and in that 
pause all loud cries are lost and the Student is 
heard saying : " Rest awhile and listen to the 
message I bring you ! I want you just for a 
minute to turn with me to the infinite. Even if 
my words be worthless, the pause will do you 
good, and you will struggle along all the more 
freshly afterwards." In these pauses is contained 



HIS VOCATION. 183 

the history of all literatures and all arts. In them, 
at intervals, the eternal calm steals strangely 
upon the finite unrest. Throughout all these is 
the whisper : " Contemporary truth is not final, 
and there is a light, my brothers, beyond the light 
of setting suns." 

But the sore difficulty is how to get the crowd 
to pause,* how to still the waters, for ever so 
brief a period of listening. By only one charm is 
the crowd won, and that charm is thorough disin- 
terestedness — the very quality which is impossible 
to the crowd itself, or any member of the crowd. 
Just in so far as the Student is disinterested, will 
the Student fascinate his hearers. They can get 
stump-orators, singers for praise, fighters, German 
prophets, every day, but they are spell-bound at 
the novelty of the man who seeks no bonus. He 
is a kind of angelic wonder, just dropt glittering 
from cloudland. The sign of disinterestedness is 
beneficence, true love for the species ; the selfish 
crowd never mistake unselfishness ; not till that is 
clear will they hearken. Therefore, we never 
hear the true Student talk brutally of the black 
man, nor mock the poor temporary Philistinism 



184 THE STUDENT AND 

of people in earnest, nor solicit attention by use- 
less ravings and insincerities. The Student is 
calm. He knows he must win the crowd by dis- 
interestedness, or by nothing. He will not bawl, 
though their backs are to him. If they ignore 
him for a time, he waits gently until they are 
ready. And the further proof of his disinterested- 
ness is this, — that, however much his message 
is to shock the world, he will never say it 
brutally or conceitedly, but lovingly and reve- 
rently, always adding — " Mind, this message is 
not final. It is the very nature of eternal truth 
to evade a decisive definition; and although I 
have seen something in that lofty region, and 
wish to report what I have seen, I pretend to 
settle nothing by authority." The exhibition of 
contempt for the audience he addresses is the first 
fatal sign of contempt for his vocation. The fool 
proves himself unfit to be a messenger, by as- 
suming the prevision of a god. 

We need not go far to seek for an example of 
a Student who despises his vocation. The last 
wild utterance of Thomas Carlyle still rings in 
our ears. 



HIS VOCATION. 185 

This writer began reverently and gained hearers. 
He read affectionately in books and in nature, 
wrote nobly, aspired calmly to the contemplation 
of eternal truth. He secured quiet, and was 
recognized as a Student. Thus much, however, 
did not content him ; and the first signs of dis- 
content were certain false notes in the voice — 
German guttural sounds, elaborate word-building, 
wild mannerism. Clearly hungry for more in- 
fluence, he wrote privately to a friend that he 
would begin to " prophesy," and avowedly with a 
view to widening his circle of hearers — as if true 
prophet ever began by perceiving that there was 
a public, and calculating how such public might 
be stirred to emotion. He did prophesy. For a 
time, the crowd listened, till slowly and painfully 
his interestedness grew upon them. So thoroughly 
had he begun to despise his vocation, that he no 
longer took the trouble to utter his prophecies 
beautifully. So completely did he despise his 
public, that he deemed the g-rossest and least- 
weighed brutalities amply good enough for them. 
Instead of looking towards eternal truth, he 
gazed with the vision of a contemporary. How 



186 THE STUDENT AND 

has this ended? The pause he once secured is 
broken. We merely hear his voice at intervals, and 
then always in the midst of a roar of voices. He 
has been whirled down into the crowd, and, 
though he shriek his loudest, there is no standing 
still to hear him. 

It so happens in this case, that circumstances 
have so arranged themselves as to prove that 
Mr. Carlyle possessed very little prophetic vision. 
His dismal prediction of anarchy and all sorts of 
accompanying evils, as likely to result to England 
because she disagreed with him as to the mights 
of man, has by no means yet been realized, and 
the " nigger" is free. Such a man was not 
likely to be silenced even by the contemplation of 
the grand American triumph of truth and human 
beneficence. The more the crowd has roared 
around about him, the louder he has screamed. 
His last utterance, though uttered in a shriller 
and fiercer key, embodies precisely what he has 
been saying ever since he despised his vocation. 
" Eagged dung-heap of a world ;" " the Almighty 
Maker has appointed the Nigger to be a servant f 
" servantship must become a contract of perma- 



HIS VOCATION. 187 

nency f " in a limited time, say fifty years hence, 
the Church, all churches and so-called religions, 
the Christian religion itself, shall have deliquesced 
into liberty of conscience, progress of opinion, pro- 
gress of intellect, philanthropic movements, and 
other aqueous residues of a vapid badly-scented 
character;" "manhood suffrage, — horsehood, dog- 
hood, not yet treated of;" "universal glorious 
liberty — to sons of the devil in overwhelming 
majority, as would appear." In these sentences 
culminates the degradation of a Student stript of 
his gown. How utterly he has become swamped 
in the crowd, when the language he employs is 
that of the wildest roughs and rowdies in the 
swarm. 

Now, if there be one true mark of the true 
Student it is the endeavour to express himself 
exquisitely. Plotinus defines the beautiful " as the 
splendour of the good ;" and after this beautiful 
— not merely good, but good glorified — the 
Student aims. He studies the poetic termi- 
nology, and culls all felicities of speech which 
secure the radiant passage of meanings to the 
minds of hearers. He shapes his glowing 



188 THE STUDENT AND 

thoughts into melodious syllables, such as com- 
mon men may not employ. Add to perfect dis- 
interestedness, perfect sweetness of voice, — and 
the people are spell-bound. Their souls are 
raised, their ears delighted. Though liberalism 
be their watchword, they will even listen to 
the gospel according to the Tories, — calmly 
hearken, I mean, to him who wishes to show that 
eternal truth is on the Tory side. Had Carlyle 
spoken in this fashion, his own reverence for 
what he conceived true would have been his 
safeguard and his honour. 

For public men are even nowadays quite ready 
to admit the services and honour the sincerity of 
the private inquirer, — especially in his capacity 
of reader of books. They say clearly, " We are 
too busy to seek precedents or study tomes — we 
have no time to collect learning — and we must 
employ you to study in our place." So while the 
public men are fighting keenly with a view to 
making some truth or seeming truth live, the 
Student familiarizes himself with history, philo- 
sophy, religion, science, in order to see what 
things have died in the past, or are dying in the 



HIS VOCATION. 189 

present, and what things, having never been 
known really to die, may now be fairly assumed 
to be eternal. Busy people, too, are very grateful 
when the Student brings to them at second-hand 
the result of all this learned inquiry. They 
hearken to it, commit it to memory, even pay for 
it liberally ; not, however, until they are perfectly 
satisfied of the calmness, disinterestedness, and 
veracity of the person who supplies it. But when 
the Student not only brings his message, but lards 
it with follies and insolencies of his own, the public 
retort is simple : — "The message you bring is a 
lie." " Brutes ! idiots ! " perhaps screams the 
Student ; " do ye dare to despise eternal truth ?" 
And the public, justly exasperated, lynches the 
fellow, crying, " Eternal truth is all very fine, but 
we are now convinced of the contemporary truth 
that you are a humbug and a ranter." 

Nor will the public men, the stragglers en 
masse, tolerate on the part of the Student any 
vain affectation of superiority. They know very 
well that the Student, from Pythagoras to 
Goethe, has always been a human being, however 
close his communication with the Olympian prin- 



h 



190 THE STUDENT AND 

cipalities ; and moreover, they know this — that 
mere living, even physical living, is any day as 
wondrous, as important, and as grand a thing as 
mere thinking. What right has the professor to 
bully the tradesman ? On what grounds does a 
poet scorn an alderman, a philosopher despise a 
member of parliament, a monk scowl at a milli- 
ner ? It is quite another thing, however, to bid 
the busy man, the man whose work is mean, the 
toiler and moiler at the tag- ends of society, pause 
occasionally, and inhale a sweet breath from the 
solitude, — to see what the stargazer is seeing, to 
hear what the minstrel is playing, to follow what 
the theorizer is proving in stately terms. But 
how lovingly, how reverently, does the true 
Student communicate with the people ! — how 
wisely does he defer to them in matters wherein 
they even have their authority ! The fine af- 
fectionate love for the species is in his eyes, and 
every word he utters is vocal with the music of 
humanity. The Man's face shines radiant under 
the academic cowl, and the appeal at the best is 
an appeal from a man's heart to the heart of men. 
The sinner is dealt with tenderly, though the sin 



HIS VOCATION. 191 

is never spared. The erring class is reasoned 
with sweetly, while the error is unmercifully 
turned inside out. And the contemporary strag- 
glers, pausing to listen, feel how calm and tender 
a thing, how loving and how beneficent, is that 
eternal truth which scholiasts would lock up in 
their secretaries, and scientific monkeys (the true 
apes of Goethe's Witch's cave) seek in vain to 
put in a crucible. 

Here, certainly, is the true clue to the won- 
drous influence of Mr. John Stuart Mill. Of all 
our Students, this one has shown himself, not 
the most profound, but the most reverent, the 
most gentle, and the most unassuming. He 
had the true philosophic calm, — the true rest 
typical of the eternal. He had no gall. Merciless 
in argument, he was tender and brotherly to 
every antagonist. All this was true of Mr. Mill, 
previous to his entry into parliament. The 
Student has since been lost in the politician — the 
pause difficult to secure — the influence scattered 
and doubtful. That a thinker so acute and 
thorough as this should have dreamt it possible 
to reconcile eternal and contemporary truth — to 



192 THE STUDENT AND 

be a student and a politician at the same time — 
has been to me one of those mysteries which are 
to be classed as insoluble. I have watched Mr. 
Mill's career with deep and grateful interest, — 
and thousands, as well as myself, felt bitter when 
the Light was put under the bushel of the House 
of Commons. How is it possible to connect 
eternal truth with the bigotry and folly which 
is represented to us by the reports in the daily 
newspapers, — to think of philosophy in con- 
nection with the blatant periods of Mr. Bright 
and the polished pettiness of Mr. Lowe, — and to 
associate calm and intellectual repose with the 
juggling insincerities of each successive Chancel- 
lor of the Exchequer ? 

Mr. Mill has really done what is being every 
day done by inferior men.* -Among the signs 
which accompany the vast political crisis which is 
at present agitating England, not least is the irri- 
tating attitude of the Student, — the class of man 
whose business it should be to mark, accompany, 
and emphasise progress, instead of muddying the 
stream of controversy. As I have suggested, the 
Student is losing the fine old reverence for his 



HIS VOCATION. 193 

own vocation, and wasting his energies in matters 
over which he has really no concern. He would 
be an authority in the world of action as well as in 
the sphere of meditation, — claiming the privileges 
of the politician, the historian, the man of science, 
and the pamphleteer. He would decide great con- 
troversies by private authority, instead of calmly 
throwing the radiance of perfect private sight on 
the tendencies of his time. Dogmatism and pup- 
pyism supervene : — the Student no longer takes 
the trouble to express himself exquisitely ; the 
crudest utterance suffices ; the most listless loose- 
ness of thought, consequent on a contempt for 
his audience. Mr. Carlyle, as we have seen, 
preaches brutalism in language as harsh as the 
barking of Cerberus. Masters of Arts, Fellows 
of Colleges, and all the tribe of people who 
remain at school all their lives, imitate Mr. 
Arnold's manner, even while disagreeing with his 
opinions. The two sets of egotists join issue in 
denouncing the tendencies of their period. Some 
of ^hese men might secure real and lasting in- 
fluence if they reverenced and clearly pursued 
their own vocation. They claim double and irre- 
o 



194 THE STUDENT AND 

concilable privileges — the authority of the private 
scholar, and the authority of the public leader. 

Deep philosophic repose is the air inhaled on 
the mountain tops, close to the stars, and must by 
no means be confounded with vulgar conscious- 
ness of calm. A person may step forward in an 
academic gown, saying : ' ' My papa was so skilled 
in developing the juvenile mind as to produce 
out of fair materials a novelist at fourteen, a 
philosopher two years later, and at eighteen an 
authority on every question under the sun — a 
wondrous little Salaputium, warranted perfect, 
and certain never to grow any more. Oh, I am so 
calm, and so clever. Yet see, how admirably I 
hide my knowledge ; that is calm, that is restraint. 
I am prepared to settle all questions by means of 
an insect exterminator, which has never been 
known to fail." But how does the public re- 
ceive such a person. " The Student," it re- 
plies, " evinces restraint and calm, does not talk 
about them ; they are, in fact, merely personal 
qualities. You fellows grow too quickly and 
stop too soon, and your calm and restraint are 
merely the inactivity and torpor consequent on a 



HIS VOCATION. 195 

system of early forcing. You have by no means 
lived enough to determine living questions, and 
the best proof of that is the unmanliness of your 
manner." And are the public wrong ? Do the 
scholastic persons show any such real love for their 
kind, any such ignoring of self, any such telling- 
enthusiasm in great questions, as would soon win 
the confidence of men and women who live in 
the world outside the academy ? I fear not. 
They are not Students, nor do they live alone. 
Brought up in classes, inoculated with the usual 
stuff very early, they hate solitude hugely. They 
must think in bodies, or they are miserable.* 

But the career of the true Student has been 
two-fold, — a period of probation in the world of 
action, previous to the period of retreat to the 
sphere of thought. In that first period, no matter 

* I must not be understood as underrating true scholar- 
ship, — only as noting the vicious effect of schools. Why 
should the scholar not be a Student ? Look at Clough ! He 
had the true calm, and his religious hunger was a real 
thing. He kept his own way, without being tempted into 
exhibitions ; and for this very reason he will have in- 
fluence, when more pretentious and noisy schoolmen are 
forgotten. 



196 THE STUDENT AND 

how short, a man not only learns what action is 
and his unfitness for it, but gets such knowledge 
of great busy powers as makes him treat power 
wisely all the rest of his life. How should he 
know that God meant him to be a Student, until ; 
he ascertained his unfitness for aught else? 
Hence the misfortune of early forcing. The 
schoolboys are wise too soon. They begin reck- 
lessly trading without capital ; evolving out of 
their own inner consciousness, like the German, a 
monster which they christen "man," and a number « 
of little monsters which they label " facts," and 
going wrong in everything, because their " facts " 
and " man " are wrong at starting : — 

Humano capiti cervicem pictor equinam 
Jungere si velit, et varias inducere plumas 
Undique collatis membris, ut turpiter atrum 
Desinat in piscem mulier formosa superne ; 
Spectatum admissi risum teneatis, arnici ? 

A little actual contact with men — not merely 
with people teaching and people taught — would 
save them, too, from regarding earth as one vast 1 
seminary. They know this truth themselves in i 
the end. We find them yearning* wildly for 



HIS VOCATION. 197 

action, writing verses of discontent, longing for 
the vague busy motion they have never ex- 
perienced ; interspersing such dissatisfied mo- 
ments by putting finishing touches to their own 
intellectual beauty, with the complacence of a fine 
lady putting on powder and rouge, and praying 
to God as to a skilful professor passionately 
attached to prodigies developed by early forcing. 

Too much reducing of life to system will not 
suit the Student. How should it, when he is 
growing* grey in the vain search of b truth that is 
absolutely final. He is the man that leaves mar- 
gins. He is very careful, therefore, how he deals 
even with contemporary superstitions, lest he 
may imitate the French writers, who destroyed, 
not only the superstitions themselves, but the 
noble truths underlying them. Coming on 
the highway, he steps among swarms of tiny 
lives, and he cannot step too cautiously, if he 
would avoid crushing something that is beautiful. 

Clear on all sides of us, in the highways and 
the byeways, in the crowd's voices, in the Students' 
messages, rises one great belief, in which eternal 
and contemporary truth seem to unite, — that we 



198 THE STUDENT AND 

are moving on to multiplicity. The mass is 
rising, rights are widening, mights are broaden- 
ing. Meanwhile, some few alarmists shriek out 
that we lack individuals and must die. Then the 
reply is, " Let us die," if the vindication of eternal 
principles is fatal. Never, to the thinking of 
many, was there a time fraught with so much 
hope to man. The emancipation of the slave, the 
steps of Germany towards freedom, the extension 
of the suffrage, are all signs and portents. Hence- 
forth, freedom is vindicated as a personal right, 
and every man is to be recognized as a respon- 
sible citizen. 

And what, in the face of these things, are the 
cries of alarmists, the shrieks of classes, — what, 
in fact, is the very threat of anarchy ? Eternal 
truth seems saving " though ye perish, I will be 
vindicated." Yet in honest truth, the danger is 
perhaps exaggerated. When matters adjust 
themselves there will be no lack of leaders, no 
lack of Students. 

If there be one truth which it behoves the 
Student to illustrate noiv, it is this mighty one, — 
God's preference of His beloved children to any 



HIS VOCATION. 199 

one of His children. If there is one quality which 
seems His, and His exclusively, it seems that 
Divine philoprogenitiveness, that passionate love 
of distribution and expansion into living forms. 
He is exhaustless, a fountain. Every animal added 
seems a new ecstasy to the Maker; every life added 
a new embodiment of His love. He would stvarm 
the earth with beings. There are never enough. 
Life, life, life — faces gleaming, hearts beating, 
must fill every cranny. Not a corner is suffered 
to remain empty. The whole earth breeds, and 
God glories. And here and everywhere, life, ab- 
solute life, is the only thing which we universally 
feel to be God's, and wholly sacred. 

Because there is sin and misery in the world, 
because hearts ache and bodies die, shall we turn 
upon this sublimely exhaustless Being, and 
demand explanation ? Is it not something to 
know how He delights in making, in endless 
creating, and that One who thus delights cannot 
be cruel. The explanation will come. Meantime, 
we move to multiplicity. Our selfish ascetics are 
no longer thought to possess god-like qualities ; 
but it is noticed everywhere that the sublimest 



200 THE STUDENT AND HIS VOCATION. 

sign of perfect culture is divine philanthropy, 
and that the nearer each man seems to approach 
God, the more he seems to exhibit the mysterious 
and god-like quality of love for the species. The 
vocation of the Student is clear. He must aid the 
work of the world, but not by noise and egotistical 
prattling. He shall show to the crowd the nearest 
human approach to the perfect disinterestedness, 
sweetness, and exhaustless charity of God's 
Eternal Truth ; and the people, listening at the 
lifting of his hand, and charmed by the sweet- 
ness .of his voice, will be happier by a message 
sent to make still wider the activities of Law 
and Love. 




IV. 



W A L T WHITMA X. 



^H^ 



" Cantantes, my dear Burdett, minus via ladit. 

Time; but bawling out the rights of man is not 
sin£rin<r." — The Diversions of Purley. 



WALT WHITMAN. 




HE grossest abuse on the part of the 
majority, and the wildest panegyric 
on the part of a minority, have for 
many years been heaped on the 
shoulders of the man who rests his claim for 
judgment on the book of miscellanies noted 
below.* Luckily, the man is strong enough, 
sane enough, to take both abuse and panegyric 
with calmness. He believes hugely in himself, 
and in the part he is destined to take in American 
affairs. He is neither to be put down by prudes, 
nor tempted aside by the serenade of pipes and 
timbrels. A large, dispassionate, daring, and 



* Walt Whitman's " Leaves of Grass," " Drum -Taps, 
etc. New York, 1867. 



204 WALT WHITMAN. 

splendidly-proportioned animal, he remains un- 
moved, explanatory up to a certain point, but 
sphinx-like when he is questioned too closely on 
morality or religion. Yet when the enthusiastic 
and credulous, the half-formed, the inquiring, 
youth of a nation begin to be carried away by a 
man's teachings, it is time to inquire what these 
teachings are; for assuredly they are going to 
exercise extraordinary influence on life and 
opinion. Now, it is clear, on the best authority, 
that the writer in question is already exercising 
on the youth of America an influence similar to 
that exercised by Socrates over the youth of 
Greece, or by Ealeigh over the young chivalry of 
England. In a word, he has become a sacer vates 
— his ministry is admitted by palpable live dis- 
ciples. What the man is, and what the ministry 
implies, it will not take long to explain. Let it 
be admitted at the outset, however, that I am 
in concert with those who believe his to be a 
genuine ministry, large in its spiritual manifesta- 
tions, and abundant in capability for good. 

Sprung from the masses, as he himself tells us, 
Walt Whitman has for many years lived a vaga- 



WALT WHITMAN. 205 

bond life, labouring as the humour seized him, 
and invariably winning his bread by actual and 
persistent industry. He has been alternately a 
farmer, a carpenter, a printer. He has been a 
constant contributor of prose to the republican 
journals. He appears, moreover, at intervals, to 
have wandered over the North American con- 
tinent, to have worked his way from city to city, 
and to have consorted liberally with the draff of 
men on bold and equal conditions. Before the 
outbreak of the war, he was to be found dwelling 
in New York, on " fish-shape Paumanok," bask- 
ing there in the rays of the almost tropical sun, 
or sallying forth into the streets to mingle with 
strange companions, — from the lodging-house 
luminary and the omnibus- driver, down to the 
scowling rowdy of the wharf bars. Having 
written his first book, " Leaves of Grass," he set 
it up with his own hands, in a printing-office in 
Brooklyn. Some of my readers may dimly re- 
member how the work was briefly noticed by 
contemporary English reviews, in a way to leave 
the impression that the writer was a mild maniac, 
with morbid developments in the region of the os 



206 WALT WHITMAN. 

2)elvis. On the outbreak of the great rebellion, 
he followed in the rear of the great armies, dis- 
tinguishing himself by unremitting attention to 
the wounded in the ambulance department, until, 
on receiving a clerkship in the department of the 
interior, he removed to Washington. Here, to 
the great scandal of American virtue, he con- 
tinued to vagabondise as before, but without 
neglecting his official duties. At the street cor- 
ner, at the drinking-bar, in the slums, in the 
hospital wards, the tall figure of Walt Whitman 
was encountered daily by the citizens of the 
capital. He knew everybody, from the president 
down to the crossing-sweeper. 

"Well," said Abraham Lincoln, watching him 
as he stalked by, " lie looks like a man." 

Latterly his loafing propensities appear to have 
grown too strong for American tolerance, and he 
was ejected from his clerkship, on the pretext 
that he had written " indecent verses," and was 
a "free lover." His admirers, indignant to a 
man at this treatment, have accumulated pro- 
test upon protest, enumerating numberless in- 
stances of his personal goodness and self-denial, 



WALT WHITMAN. 207 

and laying powerful emphasis on certain deeds, 
which, if truly chronicled, evince a width of sym- 
pathy and a private influence unparalleled, per- 
haps, in contemporary history. With all this 
personal business we have no concern. His ad- 
mirers move for a new trial on the evidence of 
his written works, and to that evidence I must 
proceed. 

In about ten thousand lines of unrhymed verse, 
very Biblical in form, and showing, indeed, on 
every page, the traces of Biblical influence, Walt 
Whitman professes to sow the first seeds of an 
indigenous literature, by putting in music the 
spiritual and fleshly yearnings of the cosmical 
man, and, more particularly, indicating the great 
elements which distinguish American freedom 
from the fabrics erected by European politicians. 
Starting from Paumanok, where he was born, he 
takes mankind in review, and sees everywhere 
but one wondrous life — the movement of the 
great masses, seeking incessantly under the 
sun for guarantees of personal liberty. He 
respects no particular creed, admits no specific 
morality prescribed by the civil law, but affirms 



208 WALT WHITMAN. 

in round terms the universal equality of men, 
subject to the action of particular revolutions, 
and guided en masse by the identity of particular 
leaders. The whole introduction is a reverie on 
the destiny of nations, with an undertone of fore- 
thought on the American future, which is to con- 
tain the surest and final triumph of the demo- 
cratical man. A new race is to arise, dominating 
previous ones, and grander far, with new contests, 
new politics, new literatures and religions, new 
inventions and arts. But how dominating ? By 
the perfect recognition of individual equality, by 
the recognition of the personal responsibility and 
spiritual significance of each being, by the abro- 
gation of distinctions such as set barriers in the 
way of perfect private action — action responsible 
only to the being of whom it is a consequence, 
and inevitably controlled, if diabolic, by the com- 
bined action of masses. 

Briefly, "Walt Whitman sees in the American 
future the grandest realization of centuries of 
idealism — equable distribution of property, lu- 
minous enlargement of the spiritual horizon, per- 
fect exercise of all the functions ; no apathy, no 



WALT WHITMAN. 209 

prudery, no shame, none of that worst absentee- 
ism wherein the soul deserts its proper and ample 
physical sphere, and sallies out into the regions 
of the impossible and the unknown. Very finely, 
indeed, does the writer set forth the divine func- 
tions of the body — the dignity and the righteous- 
ness of a habitation existing only on the condition 
of personal exertion ; and faintly, but truly, does 
he suggest how from that personal exertion issues 
spirituality, fashioning literatures, dreaming re- 
ligions, and perfecting arts. "I will make," he 
exclaims, " the poems of materials, for I think 
they are to be the most spiritual poems ; and I 
will make the poems of my body and of mortality : 
for I think I shall then supply myself with the 
poems of my soul and of immortality." 

This, I hear the reader exclaim, is rank ma- 
terialism ; and, using the word in its big sense, 
materialism it doubtless is. I shall observe, 
further on, in what consists the peculiar value of 
the present manifestation. In the meantime, let 
me continue my survey of the work. 

Having broadly premised, describing the great 
movements of masses, Walt Whitman proceeds, 
p 



210 WALT WHITMAN. 

in a separate "poem" or " book," to select a 
member of the great democracy, representing 
typically the privileges, the immunities, the con- 
ditions, and the functions of all the rest. He 
cannot, he believes, choose a better example than 
himself; so he calls this poem iC Walt Whitman." 
He is, for the time being, and for poetical pur- 
poses, the cosmical man, an entity, a representa- 
tive of the great forces.* He describes the de- 
light of his own physical being, the pleasure of 
the senses, the countless sensations through 
which he communicates with the material uni- 
verse. All, he says, is sweet — smell, taste, 
thought, the play of his limbs, the fantasies of 
his mind ; every attribute is welcome, and he is 
ashamed of none. He is not afraid of death ; he 
is content to change, if it be the nature of things 
that he should change, but it is certain that he 
cannot perish. He pictures the pageant of life 

* Let it be understood, here and elsewhere, that I shall 
attach my own significance to passages in themselves suf- 
ficiently mystical. I may misrepresent this writer ; but, 
apart from the present constructions, he is to me unintel- 
ligible. 



WALT WHITMAN. 211 

in the country and in cities; all is a fine pan- 
orama, wherein mountains and valleys, nations 
and religions, genre pictures and gleams of sun- 
light, babes on the breast and dead men in 
shrouds, pyramids and brothels, deserts and po- 
pulated streets, sweep wonderfully by him. To 
all those things he is bound : — wherever they 
force him, he is not wholly a free agent ; but on 
one point he is very clear — that, so far as he is 
concerned, he is the most important thing of all. 
He has work to do ; life is not merely a " suck or 
a sell ;" nay, the whole business of ages has gone 
on with one object only — that he, the democrat, 
Walt Whitman, might have work to do. In 
these very strange passages, he proclaims the 
magnitude of the preparations for his private 
action : — 

Who goes there ? hankering, gross, mystical, nude ; 
How is it I extract strength from the beef I eat ? 

What is a man, anyhow ? What am I ? What are you ? 

All I mark as my own, you shall offset it with your own, 
Else it were time lost listening to me. 

I do not snivel that snivel the world over, 
That months are vacuums, and the ground but wallow and 
filth; 



212 WALT WHITMAN. 

That life is a suck and a sell, and nothing remains at the 
end but threadbare crape, and tears. 

Whimpering and truckling fold with powders for invalids — ■ 

conformity goes to the forth-removed ; 
I wear my hat as I please, indoors or out. 

Why should I pray ? Why should I venerate and be cere- 
monious ? 

Having pried through the strata, analysed to a hair, coun- 

sel'd with doctors, and calculated close, 
I find no sweeter fat than sticks to my own bones. 

In all people I see myself — none more, and not one a bar- 
leycorn less ; 
And the good or bad I say of myself, I say of them. 

And I know I am solid and sound ; 

To me the converging objects of the universe perpetually 

flow; 
All are written to me, and I must get what the writing 

means. 

I know I am deathless ; 

I know this orbit of mine cannot be swept by the carpenter's 

compass ; 
I know I shall not pass like a child's carlacue cut with a 

burnt stick at night. 

I know I am august ; 

I do not trouble my spirit to vindicate itself, or be under- 
stood ; 

I see that the elementary laws never apologize ; 

(I reckon I behave no prouder than the level I plant my 
house by. afrer all). 



WALT WHITMAN. 213 

I exist as I am — that is enough ; 

If no other in the world be aware, I sit content ; 

And if each and all be aware, I sit content. 

One world is aware, and by far the largest to me, and that 

is myself; 
And whether I come to my own to-day, or in ten thousand 

or ten million years, 
I can cheerfully take it now, or with equal cheerfulness I 

can wait. 

My foothold is tenon'd and mortis'd in granite ; 
I laugh at what you call dissolution ; 
And I know the amplitude of time. 

I am an acme of things accomplish'd, and I am an encloser 
of things to be. 

My feet strike an apex of the apices of the stairs ; 

On every step bunches of ages, and larger bunches between 

the steps ; 
All below duly travel'd, and still I mount and mount. 

Rise after rise bow the phantoms behind me ; 

Afar down I see the huge first Nothing — I know I was 

even there ; 
I waited unseen and always, and slept through the lethargic 

mist, 
And took my time, and took no hurt from the fetid carbon. 

Long I was hugg'd close — long and long. 

Immense have been the preparations for me, 
Faithful and friendly the arms that have help'd me. 

Cycles ferried my cradle, rowing and rowing like cheerful 
boatmen ; 



214 WALT WHITMAN. 

For room to me stars kept aside in their own rings ; 
They sent influences to look after what was to hold me. 

Before I was born out of my mother, generations guided 

me; 
My embryo has never been torpid — nothing could overlay 

it. 

For it the nebula cohered to an orb, 
The long slow strata piled to rest it on, 
Vast vegetables gave it sustenance, 

Monstrous sauroids transported it in their mouths, and de- 
posited it with care. 

All forces have been steadily employ'd to complete and de- 
light me ; 
Now on this spot I stand with my robust Soul. 

It is impossible in an extract to convey an idea 
of the mystic and coarse, yet living, force which 
pervades the poem called " Walt Whitman." 
I have chosen an extract where the utterance 
is unusually clear and vivid. But more extra- 
ordinary, in their strong sympathy, are the por- 
tions describing the occupations of men. In a 
few vivid touches we have striking pictures ; the 
writer shifts his identity like Proteus, but breathes 
the same deep undertone in every shape. He can 
transfer himself into any personality, however 
base. " I am the man — I suffered — I was there." 



WALT WHITMAN. 215 

He cares for no man's pride. He holds no man 
unclean. 

And afterwards, in the poem called " Children 
of Adam/' he proceeds to particularise the privi- 
leges of flesh, and to assert that in his own per- 
sonal living body there is no uncleanness. He 
sees that the beasts are not ashamed; why, 
therefore, should he be ashamed ? Then comes 
passage after passage of daring animalism; the 
functions of the body are unhesitatingly described, 
and the man asserts that the basest of them is 
glorious. All the stuff which offended American 
virtue is to be found here. It is very coarse and 
silly, but, as we shall see, very important. It is 
never, however, inhuman ; indeed, it is strongly 
masculine — unsicklied by Lesbian bestialities and 
Petronian abominations. It simply chronicles 
acts and functions which, however unfit for art, 
are natural, sane, and perfectly pure. I shall at- 
tempt to show, further on, that Walt "Whitman is 
not au artist at all, not a poet, properly so called ; 
and that this grossness, offensive in itself, is 
highly significant — an essential part of very im- ! 
perfect work. The general question of literary 



216 WALT WHITMAN. 

immorality need not be introduced at all. ~No 
one is likely to read the book who is not intel- 
ligently chaste, or who is not familiar with num- 
berless authors offensive to prudes — Lucretius, 
Virgil, Dante, Goethe, Byron, among poets ; Ta- 
citus, Eabelais, Montaigne, Cervantes, Sweden- 
borg, among prose thinkers. 

The remainder of" Leaves of Grass " is occupied 
with poems of democracy, and general monotonous 
prophecies. There is nothing more which it would 
serve my present purpose to describe in detail, or 
to interpret. The typical man continues his cry, 
encouraging all men, — on the open road, in the 
light of day, in the region of dreams. All is right 
with the world, he thinks. For religion he 
advises, te Reverence all things ; " for morality, 
" Be not ashamed ; " for political wisdom among 
peoples, "Resist much — obey little." He has 
no word for art ; it is not in her temple that he 
burns incense. His language, as even a short 
extract has shown, is strong, vehement, instan- 
taneously chosen ; always forcible, and some- 
times even rhythmical, like the prose of Plato. 
Thoughts crowd so thick upon him, that he has 



WALT WHITMAN. 217 

no time to seek their artistic equivalent; he 
utters his thought in any way, and his expres- 
sions gain accidental beauty from the glamour of 
his sympathy. As he speaks, we more than once 
see a man's face at white heat, and a man's hand 
beating down emphasis at the end of periods. 
He is inspired, not angry ; yet as even inspira- 
tion is not infallible, he sometimes talks rank 
nonsense. 

The second part of the volume, " Drum-Taps," 
is a series of poetic soliloquies on the war. It is 
more American and somewhat less mystical than 
the " Leaves of Grass ; " but we have again the 
old cry of democracy. Here, in proportion to 
the absence of self-consciousness, and the pre- 
sence of vivid emotion, we find absolute music, 
culminating once or twice in poetry. The mo- 
nody on the death of Lincoln — " when lilacs last 
in the door-yard bloomed" — contains the three 
essentials of poetic art — perfect sight, supreme 
emotion, and true music. This, however, is un- 
usual in Walt Whitman. Intellectual self-con- 
sciousness generally coerces emotion, insincerities 
and follies ensue, and instead of rising into poetry, 



218 WALT WHITMAN. 

the lines wail monotonously, and the sound drops 
into the circle of crabbed prose. 

For there is this distinction between Walt 
Whitman and the poet — that Whitman is content 
to reiterate his truth over and over again in the 
same tones, with the same result ; while the poet, 
having found a truth to utter, is coerced by his 
artistic sympathies into seeking fresh literary 
forms for its expression. "Bawling out the 
rights of man," wrote Home Tooke, "is not 
singing." Artistic sympathies Walt Whitman 
has none; he is that curiously- crying bird — a 
prophet with no taste. He is careless about 
beautifying his truth : he is heedless of the new 
forms — personal, dramatic, lyrical — in which an- 
other man would clothe it, and in which his dis- 
ciples will be certain to clothe it for him. He 
sees vividly, but he is not always so naturally 
moved as to sing exquisitely. He has the swag- 
ger of the prophet, not the sweetness of the 
musician. Hence all those crude metaphors and 
false notes which must shock artists, those need- 
less bestialities which repel prudes, that general 
want of balance and that mental dizziness which 
astonish most Europeans. 






WALT WHITMAN. 219 

But when this has been said, all blame has 
been said, — if, after all, a man is to incur blame 
for not being quite another sort of being than 
nature made him. Walt Whitman has arisen on 
the States to point the way to new literatures. 
He is the plain pioneer, pickaxe on shoulder, 
working and " roughing." The daintier gentle- 
men will follow, and build where he is delving. 

"Whitman himself would be the first to de- 
nounce those loose young gentlemen who admire 
him vaguely because he is loud and massive, 
gross and colossal, not for the sake of the truth 
he is teaching, and the grandeur of the result 
that may ensue. There are some men who can 
admire nothing unless it is " strong ; " intellec- 
tual dram-drinkers, quite as far from the truth as 
sentimental tea-drinkers. Let it at once and un- 
hesitatingly be admitted that Whitman's want of 
art, his grossness, his tall talk, his metaphorical 
word-piling are faults — prodigious ones; and 
then let us turn reverently to contemplate these 
signs which denote his ministry, his command of 
rude forces, his nationality, his manly earnestness, 
and, last and greatest, his wondrous sympathy with 



220 WALT WHITMAN. 

men as men. He emerges from the mass of un- 
welded materials — in shape much like the earth- 
spirit in " Faust." He is loud and coarse, like most 
prophets, " sounding," as he himself phrases it, 
" his barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world." 
He is the voice of which America stood most in 
need — a voice at which ladies scream and whipper- 
snappers titter with delight, but which clearly per- 
tains to a man who means to be heard. He is the 
clear forerunner of the great American poets, long 
yearned for, now prophesied, but not perhaps to be 
beheld till the vast American democracy has sub- 
sided a little from its last and grandest struggle. 
Honour in his generation is, of course, his due ; 
but he does not seem to solicit honour. He is too 
thoroughly alive to care about being tickled into 
activity, too excited already to be much moved 
by finding himself that most badgered of func- 
tionaries, the recognized Sir Oracle. 



HEKRICK'S HESPEEIDES: 



A NOTE ON AN OLD BOOK. 



Flowery rhymes that blossom free 
In a tuft of greenery, 
Smiled on by the snn, and bright 
With the dews of lyric light. 



HERRICK'S HESPERIDES. 




OULD we quit Babylon, to while 
away an hour in Fairyland, among 
Titania and her maids of honour ? 
We have only to take up the " Hes- 
perides" of Robert Herrick. It is merely a piece 
of sweet and careless dissipation — the poetical 
epitome of a fanciful brain, and a tender, happy 
heart. Its author squandered all his genius in 
flower-painting, music-making, and sporting in 
the shade with Amaryllis ; but his book exists, 
full of the author and his peccadilloes ; a book 
to be cherished by lovers of lyrics ; a pretty 
souvenir of a jovial verse- writer who lived and 
made innocent love in a cassock, who tippled 
" Simon the King's" canary with Ben the 



224 HERRICK'S HESPERIDES. 

laureate and Selden the antiquary, and who 
lived a hot-headed poet's life, not the life of a 
philosopher, in the quiet woodland ways. It 
teems with that luscious physical life which 
abounded in the man who wrote it ; it is full of 
his idle fancies, his naughty sayings, and his 
wooings of women in the abstract. A more 
exceptionable book than ' ' The Complete Angler," 
its shortcomings spring, like the other's racy 
morality, from a nature which means happiness 
and candour. 

The " Hesperides" is, perhaps, the most 
musical collection of occasional verses in the 
language. Pretty thoughts and sounds, con- 
trolled and regulated by principles of most 
magical harmony, wreathe magically from the 
quaint old book, singing and dancing, smiling and 
shining, perpetuating the memory of Herrick, 
the kindly clerical Prospero who created them. 
Glad verses, sad verses, mad verses, and (in a 
strait-laced sense) bad verses, fill these pages, 
melting and sighing and dying in a thousand 
flats and sharps of melody. A book of all moods 
and measures, a rainbow blended of a thousand 



HE BRICK'S HESPERIDES. 225 

different colours ; a thing both of sable and of 
tinsel, of beautiful shreds and patches. It is 
redolent of ambrosia, nectar, and all the tipple of 
the gods. In short, it is a green arbour book, 
just as old Isaac's " Complete Angler," and 
Cotton's ' e Montaigne " are green arbour books ; 
it is to be opened at random, in fine weather, and 
dreamed over. The cool flow of the syllables, 
the jingle and glitter of the fancies, the little 
hidden love- sentiments bubbling cheerily up at 
the ends of the stanzas, make Herrick's Hip- 
pocrene very refreshing to the parched literary 
Arab, the over-worn philosopher, and the lover, 
if not to the ambitious and metaphysical modern 
Alastor. 

Many familiar faces — smiling up, as it were, 
through green leaves, daffodils, and daisies, — 
peep out on me as I dip into the book. One of 
these is the well-known " Night Piece," addressed 
to Mistresse Julia, his inspiration — a poem 
which every modern cavalier ought to have by 
heart. Another, also pretty generally known, 
is the sweet little song about " Daffodils." The 
following lines are also unique: — 

Q 



226 HERRICK'S HESPERIBES. 

Delight in Disorder. 

A sweet disorder in the dresse 

Kindles in cloathes a wantonnesse ; 

A lawn about the shoulders thrown 

Into a fine distraction ; 

An erring lace, which here and there 

Enthralls a crimson stomacher ; 

A cuffe neglectfull, and thereby 

Ribbons to flow confusedly ; 

A winning waves, deserving note, 

In the tempestuous pettecoat ; 

A careless shoe-string, in whoes tye 

I see a wilde civility ; 

Doe more bewitch me, than when art 

Is too precise in every part. 

The above is a fair specimen of Herrick's 
usual manner. It is short, pithy, and unique, 
characterized, like most of his verses, by quaint- 
ness of subject as well as of treatment. Few of 
the poems in the " Hesperides" are of much 
length, and the shortest are much the best. 
Some of the prettiest do not occupy half-a-dozen 
lines ; but they prove the force of the hackneyed 
aphorism about brevity. 






HERRICICS HESPERIDES. 227 

Her Voice. 

So small, so soft, so silvery is her voice, 
As, could they hear, 'twould make the damn'd rejoice, 
And listen to her, walking in her chamber, 
Melting melodious words to lutes of amber ! 

These lines are addressed to Mistresse Julia. 
Who could have inspired them but a Julia or a 
Sacharissa ? Who could have composed them 
but a poet and a lover, unpretending though they 
are ? Whenever he sings Julia's praises, all who 
listen recognize a genuine singer. No matter 
how slender the theme, let it be but connected 
with his lady, and the poet's fine frenzy is sure 
to issue forth in thoughts that breathe and words 
that burn, — that burn even too brightly now and 
then. Julia, in his eyes, is something to be. 
worshipped and adored ; she is akin to cherubim ; 
her form makes music of the poet's breath, like 
an iEolian harp set in the summer wind. She is 
the much-belauded heroine of the " Hesperides." 
She is to Herrick what the Church was to 
Solomon — the maker of a sweet minstrel. 

Goddess, I do love a girl 
Ruby-lipped and tooth' d with pearl ; 



228 HEBBICK'S HESPERIDES. 

he cries, with eyes that twinkle merrily under- 
neath his grey hairs. Her breath is likened to 
" all the spices of the east," to the balm, the 
myrrh, and the nard ; her skin is like a ' ' lawnie 
firmament ;" her cheek like " cream and claret 
commingled," or " roses blowing." But Julia, 
although his favourite, was not his only lady- 
love. If we are to believe his own assertion, he 
was favourably disposed towards the whole sex — 
at any rate, by no means prejudiced in favour of 
one individual. He has scores of unpitying yet 
flawless " mistresses," real and ideal, whom he 
has transmitted to posterity under such eu- 
phonious names as Silvia, Corinna, Electra, 
Perinna, Perilla, and Dianeme. As a rule, he 
sings their praises sweetly and modestly. His 
sentimental morality was by no means of the 
dull heavy kind ; on the contrary, it was brisk 
and easy, like the religious morality of Herbert 
and Wither. It was when making merry at the 
feet of Venus that he felt most at home — when 
he had nothing to do but fashion fanciful nose- 
gays, and throw them, with a laugh, into the lap 
of his lady. His songs suggest the picture of a 



HERRICICS HESPERIDES. 229 

respectable British. Bacchus, stout and middle- 
aged, lipping soft lyrics to the blushing Ariadne 
at his side ; while, in the background of flowers 
and green leaves, we catch a glimpse of Oberon 
and Titania, walking through a stately minuet on 
a close-shaven lawn, to the frolicking admiration 
of assembled fairy-land. 

Herrick's best things are his poems in praise 
of the country life, and his worst things are his epi- 
grams. Whenever he sings good-humouredly, as 
in the former, he sings well and sweetly ; whenever 
he sings ill-humouredly, as in the latter, he sings 
falsely and harshly. His gladsome, mercurial 
temper, had a great deal to do with the composi- 
tion of his best lyrics ; for the parson of Dean 
Prior was no philosopher, and his lightest, airiest 
verses are his best. What Marmontel calls 
" amiable ingenuity, undisguised openness," was 
a part of his mental as well as of his moral 
life ; shackled by conventionalism of any sort, he 
lost all that happy naivete which is the principal, 
perhaps the only, charm of his written works. 
His was a happy, careless nature, throwing off 
verses out of the fulness of a joyous heart, 



230 HERRICK'S HESPERIDES. 

rioting in a pleasant, sunny element. Out of his 
own merry and magical circle lie is stiff, stupid, 
and sophisticated. There was no ill-nature in 
him ; his epigrams had no sting. The same im- 
pulse which made him err a little induced him to 
confess his errors honestly. Without these 
errors, and the few poems in which he alludes to 
them, neither his works nor himself can be pro- 
perly understood. The epigrams I allude to are 
interspersed with the other poems, and are after 
the manner of Ben Jonson. The book would 
have been better without them. 

One or two of his fairy poems appear to me 
the very perfection of musical excellence. He is 
coarse enough here and there, without a doubt, 
and now and then his elfin court entertains in- 
discreet notions of social propriety. But his 
fairies can be very engaging, very natural little 
people, when their creator chooses to be strict 
with them on the point of moral decorum ; in 
other words, when they avoid all imitation of 
the fairies at St. James's, and remain the genuine 
little pixies of music, mischief, and moonlight. 
Oberon has his temple, whither he retires for de- 



HERRICICS HESPERIDES. 231 

votional purposes, cleansing himself with the 
holy water contained in a nutshell, and bowing to 
the altar " in a cloud of frankincense." He has 
also his feasts, when mushroom tables groan 
with steaming dainties, when dew-wine is 
sweetened in goblets of " violets blew," and 
when the gnat, the cricket, and the grasshopper 
are court musicians. 

The " pretty flowery and pastoral gale of 
fancy," which Phillips, in his " Theatrum Poe- 
tarum" gives Herrick credit for, was never 
better employed than when bruiting abroad the 
pleasures of a country life. The honest fellows 
at Dean Prior (the Devonshire parish of which 
he was vicar) loved their old ceremonies and 
customs, and kept them up right heartily; and 
no doubt the poet entered fully into the spirit of 
the local enthusiasm. He would range the woods 
on May morning with the maidens ; sit at wakes 
with the old women; drink the Whitsun ale, 
and drain the wassail bowl on Twelfth Nights, 
with the men. Of all these pleasures he sang* 
often and enthusiastically. His book is full of 
pictures taken from that little Devonshire 



u 



232 HERRICK'S HESPERIDES. 

vicarage. He found beauty in their old customs, 
however riotously conducted, however plain and 
homely. He tells us of the maypole, the morris- 
dance, the shearing feast, and the chase ; singing 
cheerily of the " nut-browne mirth and russit 
wit" of such and sundry pastoral mummeries. 
He pictures to us, with sweet music, the merry- 
makings at the wake, with its creams and 
custards, its pageantries of Eobin Hood and 
Maid Marian, its cudgel-plays, its rustic quarrels, 
" drowned in ale or drenched in beere." He 
sings of St. Distaffs Day, when the flax and tow 
of girls who " go a-spinning" is set on fire, when 
plackets are scorched, and when the maidens 
souse the men with pails of new-drawn water. 
He celebrates the coming-in of the hock-cart, 
crowned with ears of corn, surrounded by men 
and women with garlands on their heads, and 
drawn by horses <c clad in linen white as lilies." 
He describes both pastoral May-day, when boys 
and girls pluck the white-thorn boughs, when 
" green gowns are given," when troths are 
plighted ; and the Christmas festivities, when the 
log blazes on the hearth, when " psalteries " are 



HERRICK'S HESPEEIDES. 233 

played, when strong beer is quaffed and mince- 
pies eaten. When he discourses of such homely 
ceremonies, in his own soft inimitable way, I 
know no writer of lyrics who equals him in love- 
liness of music, sweetness of fancy, and luscious 
warmth of colouring. 

The greater part of the " Hesperides" was writ- 
ten in Devonshire, when the poet was vicar of the 
little parish of Dean Prior. He was preferred to 
the living by Charles I. in the year 1629, having 
been recommended by the Bishop of Exeter, to 
whom he more than once makes affectionate allu- 
sion. Herrick, then in his thirty-eighth year, 
had already tasted the sweets of literary society, 
and he did not fall in love with this same dull 
little Dean Prior as readily as might be antici- 
pated. Like Crabbe in Suffolk, and Sydney 
Smith on Salisbury Plain, many years afterwards, 
he grumbled and fretted in his solitude, de- 
scribing his parishioners as a " rocky genera- 
tion," " rude almost as rudest savages," and 
"churlish as the seas." Probably these words 
were written when the pulpit was new to him, 
when the cassock on his shoulders felt uncom- 



234 HERRICK'S HESPERIDES. 

fortable, when the boisterous young squires in 
the pews below him were taking his mental and 
moral measure. He might have found some of 
the country louts suspicious and surly; for a 
country congregation is not always bonnet-in- 
hand to the new pastor; he might have been 
received coldly enough at first by the " wealthy 
nobodies." By-and-bye, no doubt, when the 
awkward feeling wore off on both sides, priest 
and congregation fraternised. The verses ad- 
dressed to Larr prove that he felt the parting, 
when a Puritan was sent to take his place, 
and he was turned out of house and home to 
live on his fifths in London. At any rate, his 
best verses were written in that west-country 
vicarage : — 

More discontents I never had, 

Since I was born, than here ; 
"Where I have been, and still am sad, 

In this dull Devonshire. 
Yet, justly too, I must confesse, 

I ne'r invented such 
Ennobled numbers for the presse, 

Than where I loath' d so much. 

It seems reasonable to suppose that this bilious 



HERRICICS HESPEJRIDES. 235 

feeling wore off, and was absent when lie wrote 
his sweet lyrics about rural felicity. 

In reading his poems one obtains many a stray 
peep at the domestic life of the poet ; plain allu- 
sions are thrown out, which, when patched to- 
gether, may form a decently consistent picture. 
Although a universal lover, he never married. 
His little household consisted of Mistress Pru- 
dence Baldwin his housekeeper, himself, Trasy 
his pet spaniel, Phill his tame sparrow, a few 
chickens, a goose, a cat, and a pet lamb. Poor 
old Mistress Prew, once pretty Miss Prudence, was 
Robert HerricFs good angel ; and many are the 
affectionate allusions he makes to her. Through 
want and sickness, through sorrow and heartache, 
she stood by the helpless old bachelor, taking 
good care of his morals, and rendering his rural 
home cheery and comfortable : — 



These summer birds did with their master stay 
The times of warmth, but then they fled away, 
Leaving their poet, being now grown old, 
Exposed to all the comming winter's cold. 
But thou, kind Prew, didst with my fates abide 
As well the winter's as the summer's tide. 



236 HERRICK'S HESPERIDES. 

For which thy love, live with thy master here, 
Not one, but all the seasons of the yeare. 

Herrick is fully as sincere in other matters. 
He is very poor, lie admits the fact ; but he has 
his cates and beer, he thanks Heaven, and his life 
is easy. He is not good-looking ; he is mope-eyed 
and ungainly. He has lost a finger. He hates 
Oliver Cromwell. Sooner than take the Cove- 
nant against his convictions he will be thrust out 
of his living. He is of opinion that a king can 
do no wrong ; that Charles I. was a martyr, and 
Charles II. is the very incarnation of virtue. 
" Robert Herrick, Vickar," says the register, 
" was buried on the 15th day of October, 1674." 
How many true singers of lyrics has England 
boasted since that date ? 




VI. 



LITERARY MORALITY. 



LITERARY MORALITY. 




F by morality in literature,, I imply 
merely the moral atmosphere to be 
inhaled from certain written thoughts 
of men and women, I would not be 
understood as publicly pinning my faith on any 
particular code of society, although such and such 
a code may form part of the standard of my 
private conduct; as confounding the cardinal 
virtues with the maxims of a cardiphonia — 
" omnia dicta factaque," as Petronius says, 
" quasi papavere et sesamo sparsa." The con- 
duct of life is to a great extent a private affair, 
about which people will never quite agree. But 
books are public property, and their effect is a 
public question. It seems, at first sight, very 
difficult to decide what books may be justly styled 



240 LITERARY MORALITY. 

" immoral ; " in other words, what books have a 
pernicious effect on readers fairly qualified to read 
them. Starting, however, agreed upon certain 
finalities — as is essential in every and any dis- 
cussion — readers may come to a common under- 
standing as to certain works. Two points of 
agreement with the reader are necessary to my 
present purpose ; and these are, briefly stated : — 
(1) That no book is to be judged immoral by any 
other rule than its effects upon the moral mind, 
and (2) that the moral mind, temporarily defined, 
is one consistent with a certain standard accepted 
or established by itself, and situated at a decent 
height above prejudice. Bigotry is not mo- 
rality. 

Morality in literature is, I think, far more in- 
timately connected with the principle of sincerity 
of sight than any writer has yet had the courage 
to point out. Courage, indeed, is necessary, 
since there is no subject on which a writer is so 
liable to be misconceived. The subject, how- 
ever, is not a difficult one, if we take sincerity 
of sight into consideration. Wherever there is 
insincerity in a book there can be no morality ; 



LITERARY MORALITY. 241 

and wherever there is morality, but without art, 
there is no literature. 

Nothing, we all know, is more common than 
clever writing; very clever writing, in fact, is 
the vice of contemporary literature. Everywhere 
is brilliance not generally known to be Brum- 
magem, — pasteboard marvels that glimmer like 
jewels down Mr. Mudie's list. It is so easy to 
get up a kaleidoscope ; a few bits of stained 
glass, bright enough to catch the eye, and well 
contrasted, are the chief ingredients. It is so 
difficult to find a truth to utter ; and then, 
when the truth is found, how hard it is to utter 
it beautifully ! That is only a portion of the 
labour besetting an earnest writer. Directly he 
has caught his truth, and feels competent to 
undertake the noble task of beautifying it, he 
has to ask his conscience if there be not in 
society some deeper truth against which the new 
utterance may offend; and hence arise the per- 
sonal demands, — " Have I a right to say these 
things ? Do I believe in them with all my faculties 
of belief? Is my heart in them, and am I sure 
that I understand them clearly ? " The moral 

R 



242 LITERARY MORALITY. 

mind must answer. If that replies in the af- 
firmative, the minor question, of whether the 
truth will be palatable to society, is of no con- 
sequence. Let the words be uttered at all 
hazards, at all losses, and the gods will take 
care of the rest. It may be remarked, that 
what the writer believes to be a truth is in all 
possibility a falsehood, immoral and dangerous. 
The reply is, that Nature, in her wondrous wisdom 
for little things, regulates the immorality and 
the danger by a plan of her own, so delicate, so 
beautiful, as to have become part of the spirit of 
Art itself. A writer, for example, may believe 
with all his might that the legalisation of prosti- 
tution would be productive of good. He will do 
no harm by uttering his belief, founded as it is 
in his finest faculties, if he has weighed the 
matter thoroughly ; and his book, though it may 
offend scores of respectable people, will be a 
moral book. If, on the other hand, the writer 
be hasty, insincere, writing' under inadequate 
motives, he will be certain to betray himself, and 
every page of his book will offend against mo- 
rality. For the conditions of expression are so 



LITERARY MORALITY. 243 

occult, that no man can write immorally without 
being detected and exposed by the wise. His 
insincerity of sight in matters of conduct will 
betray itself in a hundred ways j for whatever be 
his mental calibre, we are in no danger of mis- 
conceiving the temper of his understanding. 
This fact, which connects the author's morality 
with the sincerity of his sight, is at once the 
cultivated reader's salvation against immoral 
effects from immoral books. What does not 
affect us as literature cannot affect our moral 
sensitiveness, and can therefore do no harm. So 
distinctly does nature work, indeed, that what is 
one writer's immorality, is the morality of another 
writer; so delicately does she work, that what 
shocks us in one book, plays lightly through the 
meaning of another, and gives us pleasure. An 
immoral subject, treated insincerely, leaves an 
immoral effect on those natures weak enough to 
be influenced by it at all. The same subject, 
treated with the power of genius and the delicacy 
of art, delights and exalts us ; in the pure white 
light of the author's sincerity, and the delicate 
tints of literary loveliness, the immoral point 



244 LITERARY MORALITY. 

just shows distinctly enough to impress purely, 
without paining. All deep lovers of art must 
have felt this in the " Cenci." A moral idea, on 
the other hand, — that is to say, an idea generally 
recognized as connected with morality, — disgusts 
us, if it be treated insincerely. Every nerve of 
the reader is jarred ; there is no pleasure, no ex- 
altation of the spirit or intellect ; and the moral 
sense feels numbed and blunted proportionally. 

The mere physical passion of man for woman 
is a case in point. The description of this 
passion in coarse hands is abominable ; yet how 
many poems are alive with it, and with it alone ! 
The early poems of Alfred de Musset are im- 
moral and unreal, and consequently displeasing \ 
some of the songs of Beranger are flooded with 
sensuality ; yet, just because they are sincere, 
they do not impress us sensually.* Iu Bums 

* " I find a highly remarkable contrast to this Chinese 
novel in the ' Chansons de BerangerJ which have almost 
every one some immoral, licentious subject for their founda- 
tion, which would be extremely odious to me if managed by 
a genius inferior to Beranger ; he, however, has succeeded in 
making them not only tolerable, but pleasing." — Goethe's 
Conversations, i. p. 350. 



LITERARY MORALITY. 245 

and Beranger, even in some of their coarsest 
moments, the physical passion is so real, that it 
bring-s before us at once the presence of the Man ; 
and, looking on Mm, we feel a thrill of finer 
human sympathy, in which the passion he is ex- 
pressing cannot offend us. In the insincere 
writer, the passion is a gross thing ; in the sin- 
cere writer, it becomes part of the life and colour 
of a human being. Thus finely does Nature 
prevent mere immorality from affecting* the 
moral mind at all ; while, in dealing with men of 
real genius, she makes the immoral sentiment, 
saturated with poetry, breathe a fine aroma, 
which stirs the heart not unpleasantly, and rapidly 
purifies itself as it mounts up to the brain. 

Certain books of great worth are of course 
highly injurious to minds unqualified to read 
them. Out of Boccaccio, whom our Chaucer 
loved, and from whose writings our Keats drew 
a comb of purest honey, many young men get 
nothing but evil. He who has gained no 
standard of his own, or whose ideas of life are 
base and brutal, had better content himself with 
Messrs. Chambers's expurgated Shakespeare, 



246 LITERARY MORALITY. 

and the good books lent out of the local library. 
But a true lover of books, though he be not a 
mere student, may pass with clean feet through 
any path of literature, as safe in the gloomy 
region of Roman satire as in the bright land of 
Una and the Milk-white Lamb : he knows well 
that what is really shocking will not attract him, 
because it is sure to be shockingly — i. e., inartis- 
tically — uttered. He feels that what is not 
abominable, but somewhat removed from his own 
ideas of decency, will affect him merely in pro- 
portion to the sincerity and delicacy of the reve- 
lation, and cannot hurt him, because it is subdued 
or kept at a distance by the mental emotion 
which the sincerity and delicacy have imparted. 
It will not disconcert him, but make him love 
his own standard all the better. It is, in fact, 
only on account of sensualists and fools that one 
now and then wishes to throw some of his best 
books in the fire. If poor Boccaccio could only 
hear what Smith and Brown say about him ! If 
La Fontaine only knew the moral indignation of 
Gigadibs ! 

The list of so-called immoral books is very 



LITERARY MORALITY. 247 

numerous. No writer, perhaps, is less spoken 
about, and yet has more attraction for students, 
than Petronius Arbiter. What is the effect of 
Petronius on the moral mind ? Not, I fervently 
believe, an immoral effect — if we set aside certain 
passages which a reader " scunners" at, passes 
over, and obliterates from his memory. Yet the 
subject is impure in the highest degree : from 
Gito to Trimalchio, every character in the satire 
is wicked. The satire is saved from worth] ess- 
ness by the sincerity of its object. It does not 
carry us away as Juvenal does ; but it impresses 
us with a picture of the times — painful, no doubt, 
but no more likely to shock us than the history 
of the reign of Charles II : then come the purer 
passages, irradiating and cheering us ; and under 
all flows the deep delicious stream of the Latinity. 
Were the book not a satire, but a purposeless 
work of imagination, it might influence us other- 
wise, if we studied it at all. As it is, History 
steps up, and makes Petronius moral. We end 
it with a strange image of the times when it was 
written ; but the passages which we do not 
forget, or try to forget, are the pure ones, such 



248 LITERARY MORALITY. 

as the delicious introductory speech on eloquence, 
and the description of the wonderful feast of 
Trimalchio. 

Juvenal is as gross, but he influences us far 
more splendidly. He carries us away, as I said 
above. When, as in the second satire, he 
launches his fierce blows at the Eoman philo- 
sophers, who thinks of the coarser details ? who 
is not full of the fiery energy which calls Vice by 
her name, and drags her naked through the 
Eoman mire ? When, in the sixth satire,* he 
vents his thunderous spleen on women, who is 
not hurried along to the end ? and who does not 
feel that the cry, coming when it did, was a sin- 
cere and salutary one ? 

When I pass from the region of satire and 
come to Catullus, my feeling changes. It may 
sound very shocking to some of the hero-wor- 
shippers, but the " lepidum novum lioellum" 
seems to me really an immoral work, and I wish 
that the dry pumice-stone had rubbed out at 



* Which Dryden, a grand specimen of literary immo- 
rality, only translated under protest. 



LITERARY MORALITY. 249 

least half of the poems. For there is sufficient 
evidence in the purer portions to show that 
Catullus was wholly insincere when he wrote the 
fouler portions — that he was a man with splendid 
instincts, and a moral sense which even repeated 
indulgence in base things failed to obliterate. 
Read the poems to Lesbia : 

Lesbia ilia, 
Ilia Lesbia, quam Catullus unam 
Plus quam se, atque suos amavit omnes ! 

Lesbia, whom (if we identify her with Clodia) 
Cicero himself called " quadrantaria," and who 
is yet immortal as Laura and Beatrice. This 
one passion, expressed in marvellous numbers, 
is enough to show what a heart was beating 
in the poet's bosom. He who could make 
infamy look so beautiful in the bright intensity 
of his love was false and unreal when he stooped 
to hurl filth at his contemporaries, from Caesar 
down to the Yibenii. His grossness is all pur- 
poseless, weak, insincere, adopted in imitation 
of a society to which he was made immeasurably 
superior by the strength of that one passion. 
His love-poems to Lesbia, coarse as they are in 



250 LITERARY MORALITY. 

parts, leave on the reader an impression very 
different, — too pathetic, too beautiful, to be 
impure. Whether he bewails in half- plaintive 
irony the death of the sparrow, or sings in 
rapturous ecstasy, as in the fifth poem, or cries in 
agony to the gods, as in the lines beginning, — 

Si qua recordanti benefacta priora voluptas, 
Est homini, quum se cogitat esse pium, 

he is in earnest, exhibiting all the depths of a 
misguided but noble nature. Only intense emo- 
tion, only grand sincerity, could have made a 
prostitute immortal : for immortality must mean 
beauty. Thus with Catullus, as with others, 
Nature herself delicately beautifies for the reader 
subjects which would otherwise offend ; and dig- 
nifies classical passion by the intensity of the 
emotion which she causes it to produce. 

It is an easy step from Catullus to La Fontaine. 
Catullus was an immoral man — lived an immoral 
life :— 

Quisquis versibus exprimit Catullum 
Raro moribus exprimit Catonem! 

But what shall we say of the charming French- 



LITERARY MORALITY. 251 

man, the child of Nature, if ever child of Nature 
existed ? If we want to understand him at all, 
we must set English notions and modern pre- 
judice to some extent aside. Look at the man — 
a man, as M. Taine calls him, " peu moral, me- 
diocrement digne, exempt de grands passions et 
enclin au plaisir i" ' ' a trifler," as he is con- 
temptuously styled by Macaulay. He sought to 
amuse himself, and nothing more; loved good- 
living, gambled, flirted, made verses, delighted 
in " bons vins et gentilles Gauloises." He did 
not even hide his infidelities from his wife. If 
she was indignant, he treated her remarks 
jocosely. He wrote to Madame de la Fontaine, 
that immediately on entering a place, when 
travelling, he inquired for the beautiful women ; 
told of an amorous adventure in an alley; and 
said, speaking of the- ladies of a certain town, 
" Si je trouve quelqu'un de ces chaperons qui 
couvre une jolie tete, je pourrai bien ni'y assurer 
en passant et par curiosite seulement \" Like all 
gay men, he had his "moments of despondency, 
but he was without depth. In spite of all this, 
he was capable of taking an independent attitude ; 



252 LITERARY MORALITY. 

and his devotion to his friends was as great as 
his infidelity to his wife. So he left behind him 
his " Fables " and ' ' Tales/' — pride and glory of 
the French nation. They are sincere — they are 
charming ; they are full of flashes of true poetry ; 
they are, in fact, the agreeable written patter of 
La Fontaine himself. Is their effect immoral? 
I think not. We are so occupied with the 
manner of the teller — we are so amused with his 
piquancy and outspokenness, that we do not 
brood too long over the impure. The flashes of 
poetry and wit play around the u gaudriole," and 
purify it unconscientiously. La Fontaine sits 
before us in his easy chair. We see the twinkling 
of his merry eye, and we hear his wit tinkling 
against his subject — like ice tapping on the side 
of a beaker of champagne. We are brought up 
with much purer notions, but we cannot help en- 
joying the poet's society — he is so straight- 
forward, so genuine. We would not like to 
waste precious time in his company very often ; 
but he is harmless. We must have a very poor 
opinion of ourselves if we think our moral tone 
can be hurt by such a shallow fellow. 



LITERARY MORALITY. 253 

It would prove no more to prolong examples of 
this sort. As for modern French writers of the 
" immoral" school, they are an imitative and 
inferior set — -only competent to hurt schoolboys. 
George Sand, because she is not always sincere, 
has written immorally — in such trash as " Leone 
Levi," for example ; but where she has conferred 
literary splendour on illicit passion, where her 
words burn with the reality of a fiery nature — 
she has not shocked us — we have been so ab- 
sorbed with the intensity of the more splendid 
emotion growing out of and playing over a sub- 
ject deeply felt. The pleasure we have derived 
from her finer efforts in that direction has not 
been immoral in any true sense of the word ; for 
the sincerity of the writer has caused the revela- 
tion of the agony, and made us feel glad that our 
own standards are happier. Inferior writers may 
grovel as much as they please, but we don't heed 
them. We know their books are immoral, but 
we know also that they are not literature. 

A well-meaning and conscientious man will not 
unfrequently disseminate immoral ideas through 
deficiency of insight. The late Count de Yigny 



254 LITERARY MORALITY. 

did so. In his translations of Shakespeare he 
softened all the coarse passages, and in many 
cases only rendered the indelicacy more insidious. 
But he sinned most outrageously in his boldest 
original effort, the play of ( l Chatterton" — "An 
austere work/' he says, " written in the silence 
of a labour of seventeen nights." The hero, of 
course, is the young English poet. The play 
is a plea for genius against society. The plea 
sounds more affective in the highnown preface 
than in the text which follows : — " When a man 
dies in this way/' says De Vignv, " is he then a 
suicide ? No ; it is society that flings him into 
the fire ! . . . There are some things which kill 
the ideas first and the man afterwards : hunger, 
for example. ... I ask society to do no more 
than she is capable of doing. I do not ask her 
to cure the pains of the heart, and drive away 
unhappy ideals — to prevent TTerther and Saint 
Preux from lovin°* Charlotte and Julie d'Etano-es. 
There are, I know, a thousand miserable ideas 
over which society has no control. The more 
reason, it seems to me, to think of those which 
she can cure. . . . One should not suffer those 



LITERARY MORALITY. 255 

whose infirmity is inspiration to perish. They 
are never numerous, and I cannot help thinking 
they possess some value, since humanity is una- 
nimous on the subject of their grandeur, and 
declares their verse immortal — when they are 
dead. . . . Let us cease to say to them, Despair 
and die. It is for legislation to answer this 
plea, one of the most vital and profound that 
can agitate society." Unfortunately, poets starve 
still, and apologists like De Vigny have not 
made society one whit the kinder. As might 
have been expected, the play is full of puerilities. 
The " Chatterton" of De Vigny is a mere abstrac- 
tion, cleverly conceived, no doubt, but no more 
like the real person than the real person was like 
a monk of the fifteenth century, or the French 
" Child of the Age." He has been educated with 
the young nobility at Oxford, has taken to litera- 
ture, and has fallen in love with " Kitty Bell," 
who has several children by a brute of a husband. 
The only way he can devise to show his attach- 
ment is to give Kitty a Bible, and the first act 
ends with her soliloquy after receiving the same. 
" Why," exclaims Mrs. Bell, " why, when I 



256 LITERARY MORALITY. 

touched my husband/ s hand, did I reproach my- 
self for keeping this book ? Conscience cannot 
be in the wrong. (She stands dreaming.) I will 
return it." In the opinion of the French drama- 
tists, it is exceedingly pathetic to find a married 
woman and London landlady falling in love with 
her lodger, and vastly probable to make certain 
lords go hunting, in Chatterton's time, on Prim- 
rose Hill. Aggravated to frenzy by mingled 
hunger and love, the poet determines to kill 
himself; but is interrupted by the entrance of 
" Le Quaker," a highly moral and sagacious per- 
son, who makes a great figure in the play. The 
two discourse on suicide. " What ! n cries the 
Quaker at last, " Kitty Bell loves you ! Xow, 
will you kill yourself ? " Whereas, in real life, 
any sensible fellow, even a Frenchman, would 
have said, " Far better kill yourself, my boy, 
than continue in this infatuation for an elderly 
married woman." Chatterton relents for the 
time being. He is afterwards made desperate, 
however, by Lord Mayor Beckford, a personage 
of whose authority De Vigny had the most ex- 
aggerated notions, and who offers the poor poet 



LITERARY MORALITY. 257 

a situation as footman. " my soul, I have 
sold thee ! " cried Chatterton, when left to 
himself; " I purchase thee back with this." 
And he thereupon drinks the opium. He 
then throws his manuscripts on the fire. " Go, 
noble thoughts written for the ungrateful ! " he 
exclaims; "be purified in the flame, and mount 
to heaven with me ! " At this point Kitty Bell 
enters the chamber, and much sweet sentiment 
is spoken. " Listen to me," says the marvellous 
boy. " You have a charming family : do you 
love your children ? " e ' Assuredly — more than 
life." " Love your life, then, for the sake of 
those to whom you have given it." " Alas ! "'tis 
not for their sakes that I love it." " What is 
there more beautiful in the world, Kitty Bell ? " 
asks Chatterton ; " with those angels on your 
knees, you resemble divine Charity." He at last 
tells her that he is a doomed man ; whereupon 
she falls upon her knees, exclaiming, " Powers of 
heaven, spare him." He falls dead. Then again 
the Quaker makes his appearance, like the moral 
incarnated ; and at his back John Bell, the brute 
of a husband. Kitty dies by the side of Chat- 



258 LITERARY MORALITY. 

terton ; and the curtain falls as the Quaker cries, 
" In thine own kingdom, in thine own, Lord, 
receive these two Maetyrs ! n 

It would be tedious to point out the sickliness 
of the story, or to show further how utterly the 
simplicity of truth is destroyed by the false ele- 
ments introduced to add to its pathos. So utterly 
unreal are the circumstances, that they impress 
Frenchmen as ludicrously as Englishmen; they 
are immoral, but harmless through very silliness. 
The play from beginning to end, in its feebleness 
and falsehood, is a fair specimen of what an in- 
competent man may do when dealing with a sub- 
ject which he does not understand. He does not 
feel the truth, and therefore introduces elements 
to make it more attractive to his sympathies. 
He thinks he is saying a fine thing when he is 
uttering what merely awakens ridicule. He pro- 
nounces Pan superior to Apollo, and gets the 
asses' ears for his pains ; and the crown is so 
palpable to the eyes of all men, that nobody 
listens to his solemn judgments afterwards. 

Wherever great sin has found truly literary 
expression, that expression has contained the 






LITERARY MORALITY. 259 

thrill of pain which touches and teaches. Where- 
ever a gay sincere heart has chosen immoral 
subjects, and succeeded in making them (as 
Goethe expressed it) not only tolerable but 
pleasant, Nature has stepped in with the magic 
of genius to spiritualise the impure. Where 
there is sin in literature and no suffering, the 
description is false, because in life the moral 
implication of sin is suffering; and whether a 
writer expresses the truth through actual expe- 
rience, or mere insight, the effect is the same. 
Where immoral subjects have been treated gaily, 
in levity, without the purifying- literary spiritua- 
lity, the result has been worthless, — it has minis- 
tered neither to knowledge nor to pleasure. 
And to what does all this, if admitted, lead ? 
To the further admission that immoral writing 
proceeds primarily from insincerity of sight, 
and that nothing is worthy the name of 
literature which is decided on fair grounds to be 
immoral. 

It is easy to apply the broad test to some of 
our older authors, who have certainly used lan- 
guage pretty freely. We shall not go very far 



260 LITERARY MORALITY. 

wrong if we pronounce many of the Elizabethan 
dramatists, and all the dramatists of the Restora- 
tion, to be immoral. Yet Shakespeare is occa- 
sionally as gross as any of his contemporaries ; 
while Jonson, an inferior writer, through a straight- 
forward and splendid nature, is singularly pure. 
I do not fancy, for my own part, that we should 
lose much if Congreve and Wycherly were thrown 
on the fire. It is fortunate that few females read 
Mrs. Behn. When we come to Swift we find a heap 
of coarse stuff, both in prose and verse ; but is it 
immoral ? As the bitter outpouring of a strangely 
little spirit, it is disagreeable, but it is real — if 
we except some of the worthless pieces and the 
worst portions of Gulliver. The descriptions in 
the latter part of Gulliver are immoral, because 
they are obviously insincere, and are therefore 
loathsome and injurious. 

For critics should insist upon the fact that 
literature is meant to minister to our finer mental 
needs through the medium of spiritualized sensa- 
tion. I do not think it possible to over-rate the 
moral benefit to be gained by the frequent con- 
templation of beautiful and ennobling literature. 



LITERARY MORALITY. 261 

But La Fontaine, as has been suggested, can 
awaken the sentiment of beauty — in his own little 
way, in his own degree. On the other hand, the 
moral injury we receive, from the contemplation 
of writings degrading and not beautiful, is also 
inestimable. In reading books it is easy to no- 
tice broad unrealities and indecencies, but very 
difficult indeed to recognize the poison coated 
with clean white diction. Mr. Tennyson might 
write a poem to-morrow which would be essen- 
tially immoral, and yet very hard to detect. In 
point of fact, being a man of genius, he would 
not do so ; but if the thing were done, not many 
would be awake to it. It requires an occult 
judgment now-a-days to find out immoral books. 
If an Englishman of to-day were to write like 
Catullus or Herrick, or to tell such tales as " La 
Berceau" of La Fontaine, or the " Carpenter's 
Wife" of Chaucer, we should hound him from 
our libraries ; and justly, because no Englishman, 
in the presence of our civilization, with the ad- 
vantage of our decisive finalities as to the decencies 
of language j could say to his conscience, " I have 
a right to say these things ; I believe in them 



262 LITERARY MORALITY. 

with all my faculties of belief; my heart is in 
them, and I am sure that I understand them 
clearly." Our danger just now does not lie in 
that direction. There is no danger of our writers 
indulging in indecencies. Whatever our private 
life may be, our literature is singularly alive to 
the proprieties. As our culture has grown, as 
our ideas of decorum have narrowed, the immo- 
rality of books has been more and more disguised ; 
indeed, so well is it disguised at this time, that 
the writers themselves often fancy they are mixing 
up aperients, not doses of wormwood. A shower of 
immoral books pours out yearly; many of them are 
read by religious societies and praised by bishops, 
and by far the larger number of them find favour 
with Mr. Mudie. A new public has arisen, created 
by new schools of writers; and now-a-days one 
must be careful how he throws out a hard truth, 
lest he hit the fretful head of the British matron. 
The immorality is of a different kind, but it works 
quite as perniciously in its own sphere as the 
immorality of modern French writers of the 
avowedly immoral school. 

The immorality I complain of in modern books 



LITERARY MORALITY. 263 

is their untruth in matters affecting private con- 
duct, their false estimates of character, the false 
impressions they convey concerning modern life 
in general, and especially with regard to the rela- 
tions between the sexes. This immorality, of 
course, shows itself mainly in our fiction ; though 
from our fiction it has spread into our religious 
writing and our philosophy. The main purpose 
of fiction is to please ; and so widely is this felt, 
that a novel with an avowedly didactic purpose 
is very wisely avoided by the subscribers to the 
circulating libraries. Scott, the greatest novelist 
that ever lived, never stooped to so-called didactic 
writing at all, directly or indirectly ; for he knew 
that to do so would have been to deny the value 
of fiction altogether, because true pictures need no 
dry tag to make them impress and teach. Thacke- 
ray was not quite so wise, being a so much smaller 
writer and inferior artist ; he worked in his own 
sickening and peculiar fashion ; yet he never pre- 
tended to be a didactic teacher. Didactic writing 
in novels, at the best, is like a moral printed 
underneath a picture, describing the things which, 
it is supposed, the reader ought to infer from the 



264 LITERARY MORALITY. 

picture ; or, like the commentaries bound in with 
some of the French translations of Goethe's 
<f Faust" and Dante's "Inferno." When, there- 
fore, we see the announcement as " A Novel with 
a Purpose/' we may pretty safely infer that it 
will serve no wise man's purpose to read that 
novel. 

Life is very hard and difficult, our personal 
relations with each other are complicated enough 
without the intrusion of puzzles and untruths from 
the circulating library. If novelists would only 
paint what they are convinced they thoroughly 
understand, and critics would only convict 
offenders more severely, we should soon be 
more comfortable. Erroneous notions of men, 
drawn from books, ruin many women yearly, 
paralyse the understanding, numb the faculty 
of insight just as it is going to accumulate its 
own wisdom, confuse the whole prospect of life 
at the very outset. Vulgar Virtue (hero No. 1) 
turns out a brute daily, and chills the ethereal 
temper of Sentimental Suffering (heroine Xo. 1), 
who, in an hour of adoration, has allied herself 
to him. Silent Endurance (hero Ts"o. 2) bears 



LITERARY MORALITY. 265 

so much that we are suspicious ; so we run 
a pin into his heart, and the heart bleeds — vine- 
gar. As men and women advance in life they 
ascertain that happiness and beauty are not to 
be produced by a single faculty, but by the 
happy harmonious blending of all the faculties ; 
that the hero in battle may make an atrocious 
husband, that vulgar virtue becomes tiresome 
when separated from spirituality, and that there 
are some things which fine natures cannot endure 
silently. This is not saying that a single faculty 
may not be remarkable and pleasing, that a hero 
is not a hero, that virtue is contemptible, that 
control over the emotions is not desirable, and 
even enviable. It means merely that the writers 
in question describe faculties and not characters ; 
abstractions, not realities ; not men and women, 
but peculiarities of men and women. The whole 
is lost in the part, and the effect is immoral in a 
high degree. 

A well-known instance in point may be given, 
and then illustrations may cease. Some years 
ago it was the custom for every novelist to make 
his hero and heroine personally handsome. The 



266 LITERARY MORALITY. 

appearance of (< Jane Eyre" was welcomed as a 
salutary protest, and a revolution was the conse- 
quence. For a considerable time afterwards ugly 
heroes and heroines were the rage ; and the book- 
shop poured forth immoral books — immoral be- 
cause they lived against a natural truth, that 
mere beauty is finer than mere ugliness, did not 
prove that nobility of nature is finer than mere 
beauty, did not tell that nobility of nature with- 
out such beauty. At present the plan of many 
novelists is very funny. They adopt a medium. 
Ugly heroes and heroines, as well as handsome 
ones, have gone out of fashion. A hero now is 
" not what would strictly be termed beautiful ; 
his features were faulty ; but there was — " any 
novel-reader will complete the sentence. In the 
same manner, a heroine, " although at ordinary 
times she attracted little attention, because, under 
the influence of emotion, so lovely that all the 
faults of feature were forgotten." I fear I hardly 
do the novel-writers justice in these matters of 
description, but their own lively paintings are so 
well known that my inability can cause them no 
injury. 



LITERARY MORALITY. 267 

Against immoral books of all kinds there is 
but one remedy — severe and competent criticism. 
If, as I have endeavoured to point out, morality 
in literature is dependent on sincerity of sight, 
and if all immoral writing betrays itself by its 
insincerity, feebleness, and want of verisimilitude, 
the work of criticism is pretty simple. To prove 
a work immoral in any way but one, it would be 
necessary to have endless discussion as to what 
is, and what is not morality. The one way is to 
apply the purely literary test, and convince the 
public that the question of immorality need not 
be discussed at all, since it is settled by the 
decision that the work under review is not 
literature. 



NOTE. 

The bulk of the preceding paper appeared some time 
since in the Fortnightly Review, and attracted considerable 
criticism. There are only a few words to be said in further 
defence of a "theory" which never pretended to be ex- 
haustive. Of the kindly critic {Spectator) who, citing 
Goethe and others, alleged that sincere work is often 
more insidious in its immorality than inferior and in- 
sincere work, it may be asked — is he not setting up the 



268 NOTE. 

final and arbitrary system of ethics which I disclaim at 
the outset, — by which Goethe's " self-love" and the like is 
to be adjudged " immoral?" How is a man's work.to be 
proven immoral because it honestly clothes his natural 
instincts in artistic language ? To another ingenious 
writer {Contemporary Review) who, in rebuking what he 
called my " love for the gaudriole" defined morality as 
faithfulness to the tendencies of one's time, I have nothing 
to reply save that a further examination of the preceding 
may show him that we do not disagree so thoroughly as his 
habit of dissecting cobwebs leads him to imagine. Other 
and hastier critics have merely gone over objections which 
had previously occurred to myself, and which are far too 
numerous to be mentioned here. 




VII. 



ON A PASSAGE IN HEINE. 



^tK^ 



I am a pilgrim, on the quest 
For the City of the Blest ; 
Free from sin and free from pain, 
When shall 1 that city gain ?" 

When suns no longer set and rise, 
When bishops' mitres star the shies, 
When alms are dropt in all earth's streets, 
And angels nod upon their seats, 

O pilgrim, thou shalt take thy stand 
Within the City yet unplannd, 
And see beneath, with sleepy shrug, 
The draff within the Pit undug." 

Xew Soxg to an Old Tuhj 



ON A PASSAGE IN HEINE, 




N the " Gestandisse " of Heinrich 
Heine occurs a pregnant passage 
concerning Hegel. " Generally/' 
writes the bitter humourist, ' ' Hegel's 
conversation was a sort of monologue, breathed 
forth noiselessly by fits and starts ; the daily 
quaintness of his words often impressed me, in- 
somuch that many of them still cling to my 
memory. One fine starlight evening, as we stood 
looking out from the window, I, a young man of 
twenty-fjve, having just dined ivell and drunk my 
coffee, spoke enthusiastically concerning the stars, 
and called them the homes of departed spirits. 
' The stars, hum ! hum !' muttered Hegel. ' The 
stars are only a brilliant leprosy in heaven's face.' 
' In God's name, then, I exclaimed, ' is there no 



272 ON A PASSAGE IN HEINE. 

place of bliss above, where virtue meets with its 
reward after death V But he, the master, glaring 
at me with his pale eyes, said sharply, f So ! you 
want a bonus for having taken care of your sick 
mother, and refrained from poisoning your worthy 
brother /' " It is in no profane spirit that I select 
this grim and terrible passag-e for a brief com- 
ment. The words in italics touch on the pro- 
found mystery, but only make it more hopeless. 

Feeble religion, clinging with slight hands of 
flesh to every straw of counsel, may gain help and 
comfort from the prospect of rewards, may cross 
herself and groan at the brimstone jaws of the pit 
of punishments ; but out of the clear white air of 
theology, this doctrine of the booms drops like a 
falling tear. There, at least, in that serene at- 
mosphere, we cease to regard the Master merely 
as an Almighty Pedagogue, dealing out prizes to 
the good and whippings to the naughty, or as a 
splendid Sentimentalist, making of widows' tears 
and bairns' blood the rainbow of a heaven of 
melancholy beauty. Humbly, as in a glass, dimly, 
mystically, we behold something infinitely more — 
a Spirit abiding by the wondrous fitness of life 



OX A PASSAGE IX HEIXE. 273 

itself, and stooping to no prevarications with the 
wicked or the unhappy. Life once given, the rest 
is easy. We are to play our little comedy or 
tragedy in our own fashion, and so effloresce into 
beauty at once, or retreat again into the phases 
of decay. But as for that new Jerusalem, perhaps 
it is not yet built, and if it indeed be fashioned, 
be sure that the foundation-stone of the city is 
not to be laid in hell. Now and henceforth, 
perfect bliss is a blank business, the point where 
man and monkey shade off into the elements. If 
I assassinate my father, it needs no hades to 
adjust the matter ; and, here and elsewhere, heaven 
will never go by mere finite merit. 

It is natural for very pious people to be afraid 
of theology — white light blinds quickest. But 
a little more theology would do our religion no 
harm. We find that even the tender-hearted, 
who will by no means believe in the Pit, are quite 
ready to pin their hopes on the Paradise. It is 
very sad. Men who, like myself, believe in the 
Redeemer, find it hard to follow Him beyond a 
beautiful halting- place. We long so wearily for 
sleep ; yet is it not barely possible that the sleep 



274 ON A PASSAGE IN HEINE. 

wherewith our life is rounded may refresh us 
amply, so that we shall awake ready to go on and 
on ? Waking and sleep, sleep and waking. The 
tired dews of one life wiped away, the pilgrim 
shall push forward till he is tired again. Another 
sleep, another waking. At every stage, the 
wonder deepening ; at every life, the faculty for 
living intensifying. But eternal halt, no ! God 
is exhaustless, and the soul thirsts everlastingly, 
and the path ever winds onward. Who would 
exchange this activity for howsoever sweet a 
symposium ? 

To the purpose, though with a far different 
drift, wrote Moses Mendelssohn, in his new 
Phoedo. " We may then," said Socrates, u with 
good grounds assume that this struggle towards 
completeness, this progress, this increase in in- 
ward excellence, is the destination of rational 
beings, and consequently, is the highest purpose 
of creation. We may say that this immense 
structure of the world was brought into being that 
there may be rational beings which advance from 
stage to stage, gradually increase in perfection, 
and find their happiness in their progress; that 



ON A PASSAGE IN HEINE. 275 

all these should be stopped in the middle of their 
course, not only stopped, but at once pushed back 
into the abyss of nothingness, and all the fruits of 
their efforts lost, is what the Highest Being can- 
not have accepted and adopted into the plan of 
the universe." 

This world, with its infinite gulfs of sorrow and 
horror, its piteous lights, its ghostly sounds, 
merely a prelude to a Paradise beyond the sunset? 
How stale, flat, and unprofitable a business. If 
that be all, a still small voice asks how easy for 
Him to have abolished the preliminary agony and 
given us the bliss at once. What is He ? The 
giver of a bonus. What are we ? Strugglers 
after a bonus. Something more ? Then sorely 
that something more implies disinterestedness- — 
contentedness to suffer a little for God's sake, 
when diligently assured that suffering is in the 
scheme. It may need these tears to give a zest 
to living ; for I, at least, can conceive no life all 
tears, or quite without them. By all tokens around 
us, by the eyes of heaven over us, by the wail of 
the earth under us, by life, by love, by sorrow, all 
signs seem to imply that God by no means believes 



276 ON A PASSAGE IN HEINE. 

in perfect bliss. He has wept ere now, and bit- 
terly; throned on the wondrous system of things, 
He is not ever- smiling ; why, that irradiate light 
would wither up our eyesight, and we should 
stand piteously like blind men in the sun, for the 
sake of its warmth ; whereas light was meant to 
see by, as well as to quicken the vital principle of 
pleasure. "All but philosophers," said Socrates to 
his friends on that sad parting-day at Phlius, "All 
but philosophers are courageous through fear and 
brave through cowardice. So of men who attend 
merely to decency ; they are temperate through 
intemperance. They abstain from some pleasures 
for the love of other pleasures; they call it in- 
temperance to be the slaves of pleasure ; but it is 
by serving some pleasures that they conquer 
other pleasures ; and so, as I have said, they are 
temperate from intemperance. But this kind of 
barter, my excellent Simmias, is not the true 
trade of virtue; this exchange of pleasures for 
pleasures, and of pains for pains, and of fears for 
fears, great against small, as when you take small 
change for a large coin. The only genuine 
wealth for which we ought to give away all other, 



ON A PASSAGE IN HEINE. 277 

is true knowledge." By knowledge Plato means 
Sight. 

But our knowledge is not to make us vain- 
glorious. What are we that we are to scream up 
to God how virtuous we are, how wicked our 
neighbours ! If there were heaven, and it were to 
go by absolute merit, perhaps the man who 
was hung* for murder yesterday would have as 
good a chance as Shelley or Jeremy Bentham. 
Virtue is a hard matter to mete, when we imply 
by virtue something more than mere respect for 
public opinion, than mere good fortune, than mere 
good philosophy, than mere " ideas •" and vice is 
often enough just natural shadow, which prevents 
you from seeing the stilly quivering depths of a 
brother's soul. There would be a terrible diffi- 
culty as to passports. 

Does it need heaven and hades to make death 
bearable ? Alas, too often. Yet death is but the 
glass, as it were, wherein souls may see them- 
selves. What says the Delphic woman on the 
tripod ? Hark to the oracle ! — 

Hark, I shadow forth to ye 
What the pure of sight will see ! 



278 ON A PASSAGE IN HEINE. 

Evermore, all human breath 
Blows against the mirror, Death, 
Evermore ye seek to know 
Whence ye come, whither ye go ; 
Evermore the hollow sky, 
Full of voices, makes reply 
With the echo of your cry. 

As an ever-changing mist, 
Moonshine-lit or sunshine-kiss'd, 
Floats before and seeks to pass, 
Some huge mirror made of glass, — 
Rendering, do all it will, 
Its reflection dimmer still, 
And the mirror's inner light 
Weirder, fainter, to the sight. 
Even thus all human life, 
Darkening in dusky strife, 
Blows with unavailing breath 
On the phantom mirror, Death, 
In that phantom-mirror rolls 
Mist on mist of human souls, 
Mist on mist whose image seems 
Beautifully weird as dreams ; 
And among the phantasies 
Few themselves can recognize, 
And ye shudder, for your hearts 
Know not their own counterparts. 
Yet the more the mists that pass 
Duskily before the glass, 
Thicken into cloud and lose 



ON A PASSAGE IN HEINE. 279 

Individual lights and hues, 
More and more each special form 
Loses shape and gathers storm, 
More and more the mirror, Death, 
Frights the gaze, and darkeneth. 



Thus I shadow forth to ye 
What the pure of sight will see ! 
O'er the mass rich colours roll, 
When some nobler-sighted soul, 
Scorning lust of pomp and pelf, 
In the mirror sees himself, 
Sees his face, and knows it not, 
Sees sweet joy, nor questions what ; 
Pale with love and awe, he cries, 
" Lo, the loveliness that lies 
Far within the realm that we 
Ever seek, yet dread to see ! " 
All his fellows, more or less, 
Recognize that loveliness, 
All around him growing bright 
With a reverent delight, 
All the happiness partake, 
While, for that one spirit's sake, 
Death itself grows unaware 
Glorious and divinely fair ! 

Last, assure your heart that nought 
Beautiful in deed or thought, 
Beautiful and pure and wise, 



280 ON A PASSAGE IN HEINE. 

Ever wholly fades or dies ; 
When one passionate soul in pride 
Sees Death's mirror glorified, 
Summoning his kind to see 
What is clear to such as he, 
Back to that one soul is given 
Glorv he confers on heaven ! 

If I turn my own soul to the glass, for ex- 
am-pie, what happens ? I do not behold the 
heaven of the preacher, — I do not, cannot, see 
the blaze of a bonfire : but my eyes are troubled 
with deep vistas, glimpses of beautiful lands, where 
spirits wander to unearthly music, ever and anon 
turning hitherward * faces sweetly troubled and 
strangely human. My father is there, and another 
whom I loved ; — the old familiar forms, the dear 
familiar eyes, only just a little sweetened by the 
light of the new knowledge. And turning to my 
neighbour, I point out these things in the mirror ; 
but his face is terribly distorted, and the reflection 
of his poor soul yonder looks lurid, and he sees the 
flame at the jaws of the Pit. " The pity of it, the 
pity of it, Iago ! " It is little good to compare 
notes with him. Why should he listen, indeed ? 
An ordinary boyhood — a sweet friendship — a 



ON A PASSAGE IN HEINE. 281 

struggle for bread — more than one death-bed 
sorrow — what are such things that they should 
reverberate poetical echoes ? and what interest has 
this man and the world at large in another me- 
moranda of himself? Other men must answer 
these questions. Meanwhile let no man write 
indefinitely. He will have done at least some- 
thing who shows how heavily the burthen of life 
presses, whenever our life, our love, our specula- 
tion and our faith, become too personal ; that it 
is only out in the world mortals find any peace ; 
that it is often in the still depths of the soul the 
devil sees himself best; and that, once and for 
all, God's business is greater than our smiles 
or tears. 

Out of a young man's life, what a philosophy ! 
what humour for the political economist ! what 
mockery for the law-giver and the ready writer ! 
Yet some of us can get no further, and see many 
old men who have got no further. Human suf- 
fering is inscrutable to me — my own suffering is 
intolerable; yet I thank God for life. I do 
not quite see why I should pray, or to whom I 
should pray ; and yet pray I must. I can hope 



282 ON A PASSAGE IN HEINE. 

only for the best. Men, as I see them, differ so 
little after all, and sin so little, and thrive so little, 
that an entire democritical paradise often is in 
my prospect. I feel myself so paltry, and find 
others so paltry — I feel myself so grand, and 
find others so grand — that I picture only one 
sort of salvation, wherein kings, courtiers, pick- 
pockets, assassins, and critics, would all get 
spiritualized together. 

There are compensations. Directly such things 
are felt with all one's might, it is astonishing how 
easy all life becomes. In the pure white light of 
God's charity, we see our loved ones go away, and 
grow quite calm in time beside their grave. In 
that light I tolerate myself, love myself — the 
being with whose unfitness for a pure heaven I 
have most reason to be acquainted, and with all 
my sins on me, I can look straight up at my 
Master, saying, " I am safe in Thy care for all — 
all will be well. Thou didst make me, and wilt 
obliterate whatever is unfit in me." But it is only 
in my meaner moments that I solicit the bonus ! 
All men are sleepy occasionally, and cowardly, 
and mean. But with the wondrous world around 



ON A PASSAGE IN HEINE. 283 

me, with light playing sweetly on the green 
cheek of the earth, with men coming and going, 
with sonls growing, rights broadening, truths 
purifying, I feel that life, mere life, is ample — 
the gift of all gifts — the finish beyond which I 
cannot go. If I shall live on, all is well. For this 
life, as I know it, the twelfth chapter of Paul's 
First Epistle to the Corinthians is my Gospel ; — 
that is exhaustless ; charity to men and women, 
and most of all to myself, is what sweetens me to 
myself. Charity " beareth all things, belieyeth 
all things, suffereth all things, endure th all things. 
Charity never faileth : but whether there be pro- 
phecies, they shall fail ; whether there be tongues, 
they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, 
it shall vanish away." Charity is all that men 
lack; sin, knowledge, prayer, are nothing. All 
is explained in those supreme moments when a 
human soul irradiates a human body, and has no 
scorn for its abode, and can look forth and see 
the celestial inmates everywhere in fairer or viler 
bodies, and feel the breath of God lying over all, 
palpable, though unseen, like the air we breathe 
and live by. 



284 ON A PASSAGE IN HEINE. 

Too much self-cogitation, I repeat, will not do ; 
the fountain of love must be kept stirred, or it 
will freeze. Who can conceive any modern 
being, far less any modern poet, without abun- 
dant sympathetic exercise and great charity ; 
and the finer the charity, let us hope, the clearer 
will be the music, — which music at least God 
will hear and understand. The only hope is to 
go forth into life and watch men and women — 
high or low — exactly at that point, the highest 
point of their spiritual life, where they contact 
with that ideal of perfect disinterestedness, which 
we call God. All contact with God somewhere. 
Sin is spiritualized by personal ties — human ties 
are invariably pathetic — and where the pathetic 
essence is perceptible, God is not far away. 
Once and for all, the danger of dangers is that 
of attaching too sentimental or too sleepy a con- 
struction to history or actual experience. Actual 
physical life is as mysterious, as progressive, as 
wonderful, as any of our fantastic theories or per- 
sonal emotions, and the condition of perfect health 
is the due exercise of all the functions. Let us 
grow, and grow, and grow. Better annihilation 



ON A PASSAGE IN HEINE. 285 

than the perfect bliss of the preacher. God is 
eternal, and can never pause : — pause is death : — 
and how should God die ? 



THE HYMN". 



K1 



ORD, Thou hast given me life and breath, 
Sleep and foreknowledge, too, of death ; 
My eyes shall close, my span pass by, 



Yet, Lord, I know I shall not die. 

Lord, I shall live beyond the grave, 
Made happier by Thy power to save ; 
Yet, though I see a clime more fair, 
I shall not quite cease weeping there. 

Lord God, be with me day and night ! 
Strengthen me ! give me clearer sight ! 
And here and there, in life and death, 
Strength to despise too easy breath. 

For, Lord, I am so weak and low, 
So pain'd to stay, so loath to go, 
And most of all I need to gain 
The flower and quintessence of pain. 

Lord, make me great and brave and free ! 
It is enough to breathe and be ! 
Out of the blessed need to grow 
Blossoms the thirst to love and know. 



286 ON A PASSAGE IN HEINE. 

And in Thy season, Master blest, 
Grant me a little sleep and rest ; 
Then, wakening, — in a sweeter place, 
Thy sunlight pouring on my face. 

Lord, let me breathe ! Lord, let me be ! 
Give me Thy light, and let me see ! 
And now and then, to make me strong, 
A little sleep, but not too long. 

Thus, Lord, for ever let me range 
Through pain, through tears, through strife, 

through change, 
Make me full blessed in Thy light, 
But never at the price of Sight ! 




VIII. 



ON MY OWN TENTATIVES. 



^p^ 



Hard hard, hold mine ! deep eyes, look into these ! 

Strong soul, befriend a troubled moderns song ! 
Thou poor man, beaten on by rain and breeze, 

Thou who shalt rule the nations, make me stror/g" 
An Invocation to Lazarus. 




ON MY OWN TENTATIVES. 



to 




SHALL offer no apology for now en- 
tering upon the discussion of so per- 
sonal a matter as the purport of my 
own poetical writings. If I am self- 
conscious and interested here (and I by no means 
hope wholly to escape misconstruction) I have 
been so all along ; for while discussing the poetic 
character, describing the Student's vocation, in- 
quiring what is and what is not Literary Morality, 
and finally bringing the whole matter to the test 
of spiritual and theological light, I have been 
steadily proceeding in this direction. Whom 
should these thoughts guide, if they are not to be 
as lamps to my own feet ? Whom should I dare 
u 



290 ON MY OWN TENTATIVES. 

to rebuke, if I were fearful of setting an example ? 
I must utter my message at any cost— believing, 
as I do, that, although I may utterly fail to 
clothe my aspirations or opinions in artistic or 
permanent forms, yet that those aspirations and 
opinions are fraught with the deepest import- 
ance, — are destined sooner or later to bear fruit 
that will make art nobler, and deeply gladden the 
spirits of men. 

In three volumes of ambitious verse,* con- 
sisting chiefly of tentative attempts to picture 
contemporary scenes, I have been doing my best 
to show that actual life, independent of accessories, 
is the true material for poetic art ; that, further, 
actual national life is the perfectly approven 
material for every British poet ; and that, in a 
word, the further the poet finds it necessary to 
recede from his own time, the less trustworthy is 
his imagination, the more constrained his sym- 
pathy, and the smaller his chance of creating true 
and durable types for human contemplation. The 



* I do not here include "Undertones," which belongs to 
a totally different category. 



ON MY OWN TENTATIVES. 291 

success of my writings with simple people may be 
no sign of their possessing durable poetic worth, 
but it at least implies that I have been labouring 
in the right direction. On reviewing the history 
of my three books I find that I have every reason 
to congratulate myself on the sympathy of the 
great body of public writers. My greatest oppo- 
nents have been found among men of what is 
called " literary culture" — an epithet implying 
excellent education, vast reading, real intelligence, 
and much respect for tradition. " You have evi- 
dently gone to the life for your subjects," writes 
a distinguished living critic, "but still I would 
have you remember that if one, while going to the 
life, chooses a subject which is naturally poetical, 
one's chances of the best poetical success will be 
increased tenfold." A gifted young contemporary, 
who seems fond of throwing stones in my direction, 
fiercely upbraids me for writing " Idyls of the 
gallows and the gutter," and singing songs of 
" costermongers and their trulls." Gentlemen 
from the universities shake their heads over me 
sadly, and complain, somewhat irrelevantly, I 
think, that I am not Greek. Now, I am quite ready 



292 ON MY OWN TENTATIVES. 

to credit all these gentlemen with perfect sincerity, 
and, so far as taste is founded on tradition, with 
perfect good taste. Whether from too elaborate 
a collegiate education, or from class pride, or from 
actual deficiency of imagination, they do really 
associate vulgarity with a certain class of subjects, 
they do really feel that contemporary life is not 
naturally poetic, they do really breathe more freely 
under the masks of the old drama, than when face 
to face with the terrific commonplaces and sub- 
lime vulgarities of great cities. Views of contem- 
porary life, to please them, must be greatly ideal- 
ized or subdued to the repose of Greek sculpture ; 
but, for the most part, they would consign con- 
temporary material to the comic writer, and re- 
serve our ordinary daily surroundings for the use 
of the manufacturers of Adelphi farces. In (C Pin- 
dar and Poets unrivalled," they confine their 
sympathy to tradition, and care most for sta- 
tuesque woes and nude intellectualities moving on 
a background of antique landscape. If they are to 
find a poetic theme on the soil, they must go very 
far back in the chronicle — say, as far as Boadicea. 
The more misty the figures, the less their vul- 



ON MY OWN TENTATIVES. 293 

garity, in the eyes of those who wish to build 
colleges on Parnassus, and who learn Greek in 
order to address the Muses, forgetting that the 
nine ladies now favour the moderns, and have 
almost entirely forgotten their beautiful native 
tongue. 

However, the mania for false refinement, which 
distinguishes educated vulgarity, must not blind 
us to the truth that a large portion of the public, 
and these highly intellectual people, are quite in- 
capable of perceiving the poetry existing close to 
their own thresholds. The little world in which 
they move is so vulgar and sordid, or so artificial, 
that the further they escape from its suggestions 
they feel the freer. What they cannot feel in the 
office or the drawing-room they try to feel in the 
garden of Academus. Their daily life, their daily 
knowledge and duty, is not earnest enough to 
supply their spiritual needs, and they very natu- 
rally conclude that the experience of their neigh- 
bours is as mean as theirs. In the ranks of such 
men we not seldom find the lost Student ; but 
the majority call themselves cultured, as their 
neighbours call themselves virtuous, — -just for 



294 ON MY OWN TENTATIVES. 

want of some other spicier peculiarity to distin- 
guish them from their fellows. 

Let it be at once conceded that our modern 
life is complex and irritating, and, at a superficial 
glance, sadly deficient in picturesqueness . Streets 
are not beautiful, and this is the age of streets ; 
trade seems selfish and common, and this is the 
age of trade; railways, educational establishments, 
poor houses, debating societies, are not romantic, 
and this is the age of all these. But if we strip 
off the hard outer crust of these things, if we pass 
from the unpicturesqueness of externals to the cur- 
rents which flow beneath, who then shall say that 
this life is barren of poetry ? Never, I think, did 
such strange lights and shades glimmer on the 
soul's depths, never was suffering more heroic, 
or courage more sublime, never was the reticence 
of deep emotion woven in so closely with the 
mystery and the wonder of the world. Yet a very 
brief glance at recent poetry will show how blind 
our poets have been to this most legitimate 
material. Of the poets of the last generation, 
Wordsworth and Crabbe depicted actual life 
as they beheld it ; Wordsworth dissecting silent 



ON MY OWN TENTATIVES. 295 

endurance with iron pathos, and Crabbe pro- 
truding unpoetic details with the art of the parish 
clerk. While Crabbers pictures are nearly worth- 
less, poetically speaking, and have done much to 
deepen the prejudice against the poetic treatment 
of contemporary life, Words worth's are really 
poetic, but are often too cold and academic in the 
outline, too little disinterested, except where they 
deal in mere emotions, to be quite satisfactory. 
Hood, alone, once or twice caught the throb of 
the great heart of modern time ; had his sym- 
pathies been closelier concentrated, had his neces- 
sities been less urgent, I believe this wonderful 
and totally misunderstood genius might have 
done much to revolutionize English poetry; for 
he more than once evinced glimmers of sympathy, 
sanity, insight, and single-hearted beneficence, 
which it is difficult to discover even in Words- 
worth. Among contemporaries there has been 
shown a more earnest craving to do justice to 
the present. Tennyson has given us a garden 
philosopher's group of modern idyls, often signi- 
ficant, sometimes deep, and always finely repre- 
sentative of English elegance. "The Gardener's 



296 ON MY OWN TENTATIVES. 

Daughter/' " The Miller's Daughter/' and " The 
Brook/' * are exquisite attempts to paint Eng- 
lish landscape, with the addition of a few deli- 
cate figures ; but if we wish to perceive the full 
amount of Tennyson's apprehensiveness towards 
modern life, we must turn to " Maud/' which is 
full of interest, in spite of its inferiority as a poem. 
On the whole Tennyson does not, and cannot, 
sympathise much with life not ornate, though he 
has nobly striven to educate his eye and heart. 
Clough endeavoured, with some success, to express 
in verse much of the unsatisfied longing of middle- 
class culture, but his instincts were scholastic, 
not humanitarian. Mr. Arnold no sooner touches 
the solid ground of contemporary thought, than all 
his grace forsakes him, and his utterance becomes 
the merest prose. Mr. Browning, of whose 



* Of these three poems, the last is infinitely the highest, 
because it draws its most touching force from a universal 
spiritual chord — the contrast of the changefulness of human 
life with the durability of natural objects. The " Grand- 
mother" is fine for a similar reason. I confess, however, 
that I am blind to the poetic merit of the " Northern 
Farmer," however conscious of its force as a photograph. 



ON MY OWN TENTATIVES. 297 

moral and mental greatness there can be no 
question, has only once or twice attempted 
essentially English themes ; and, although this 
writer's human sympathy is wondrously deep and 
beautiful, it is often overcast by intellectualities 
that deaden . the sense of life. Mrs. Browning, 
alone, of all the recent poets, reached the deep 
significance of her century. " Aurora Leigh" is 
too wild and diffuse, too morbidly female, to be 
called a great work of art, but it contains passages 
newer, truer, and profounder than any other 
modern poem. England has lost her greatest 
modern light in Mrs. Browning. She has left 
little behind her to represent her mighty sym- 
pathy and capacity for apprehending, but she 
stands unique in these days — specifically a poet — 
one troubled by the great mystery of life, and 
finding no speech adequate but song. Had she 
survived, and been open to English influences, 
she would have written her name on the fore- 
head of her time, and forced the stream of English 
poetry into a newer and a deeper channel. 

But it is at least clear, from these examples, 
that the poetry of humanity is newly dawning. 



298 ON MY OWN TENTATIVES. 

To the preacher, to the poet, to the philosopher, 
the people must look more constantly than here- 
tofore for guidance. Religion and science have 
their spheres denned for them: our singers are 
but learning to define theirs. Genius, as much as 
liberty, is the nation's birthright, and it misses 
its aim when it confines its ministrations to any 
section of the state. Poetic art has been tacitly re- 
garded, like music and painting, as an accomplish- 
ment for the refined, and it has suffered im- 
measurably as an art, from its ridiculous fetters. 
It has dealt with life in a fragmentary form, 
and with the least earnest and least picturesque 
phases of life. Yet the intensity of being (for 
example) among those who daily face peril, who 
are never beyond want, who have constant pre- 
sentiments of danger, who wallow in sin and 
trouble, ought to bring to the poet, as to the 
painter, as lofty an inspiration as may be gained 
from those living in comfort, who make lamen- 
tation a luxury and invent futilities to mourn 
over. The world is full of these voices, and the 
poet has to set them into perfect speech. But 
this truth has been little understood, and but 



ON MY OWN TENTATIVES. 299 

partially acted upon. Our earliest English poets 
had some leanings towards the heroism of fate- 
stricken men; and Chaucer could dwell on the 
love of a hind with the same affection as upon 
the devotion of a knight. The old poet had a 
wholesome regard for merit unbiassed by acces- 
sories ; but the broad light he wrote in has suf- 
fered a long eclipse. 

The risk of appearing self-credulous shall not 
prevent me from explicitly expressing, in the 
interests of art and artists, the principles which 
have regulated my own tentative attempts at 
this poetry of humanity. They may be briefly 
enumerated. That the whole significance and 
harmony of life is never to be lost sight of in 
depicting any fragmentary form of life, and that, 
therefore, the poet should free himself entirely 
from all arbitrary systems of ethics and codes of 
opinion, aiming, in a word, at that thorough dis- 
interestedness which is our only means to the 
true perception of God's creatures. That every 
fragmentary form of life is not fit for song, but 
that every form is so fit which can be spiritualized 
without the introduction of false elements to the 



300 ON MY OWN TENTATIVES. 

final literary form of harmonious numbers. That, 
failing the heroic statue and the noble features, 
almost every human figure becomes idealized 
whenever we take into consideration the back- 
ground of life, or picture, or sentiment on which 
it moves; and that it is to this background a 
poet must often look for the means of casting 
over his picture the refluent colours of poetic 
harmony. That the true clue to poetic success 
in this kind is the intensity of the poet's own in- 
sight, whereby a dramatic situation, however un- 
dignified, however vulgar to the unimaginative, 
is made to intersect through the medium of lyrical 
emotion with the entire mystery of human life, 
and thus to appeal with more or less force to 
every heart that has felt the world. 

Truth, then, to hit the sense of hearers, was to 
be strangely spiritualized — spiritual truth being 
truth seen through the peculiar medium of a man's 
own individual soul. The poet's first task was to 
purify the medium as much as possible, to drain it 
of all prejudices in favour of special virtue, or 
knowledge, or culture. It was the poet's business, 
not to preach morality, not to inculcate intellec- 



ON MY OWN TENTATIVES. 301 

tuality, not to describe this or that form of life as 
finally and significantly holy, but to be just with- 
out judgment to the pathos and power of all he 
saw or apprehended. The accessories must belaid 
aside, the conventionalities disregarded, and the 
deep human heart laid bare. The only bond in- 
cumbent on the poet was the artistic one. It was 
not enough merely to represent life, — it was 
necessary that the representatives should be 
beautiful. It was not enough to mirror truth, — 
the truth must be spiritualized. It was not enough 
to catch the speech of man or woman, — that 
speech must be subtly set to music. 

With these views, still faint, but strengthening 
upon me ; I wrote the poems of {< Inverburn," — a 
series of dramatic soliloquies put into the mouths 
of certain poor folk, figures seen on the back- 
ground of a familiar Scottish village, — 

The clachan, with its humming sound of looms, 
The quaint old gables, roofs of turf and thatch, 
The glimmering spire that peeps above the firs, 
The waggons in the lanes, the waterfall 
With cool sound plunging in its wood-nest wild, 
The stream whose soft blue arms encircle all, — 
And in the background heathery norland hills, 



302 ON MY OWN TENTATIVES. 

Hued like the azure of the dew-berrie, 
And mingling with the regions of the Rain ! 

I cannot, of course, say where I have perfectly 
succeeded in realizing my own ideal in these 
poems ; but I am at least conscious to some extent 
where I have failed. In "Willie Baird" and 
" Poet Andrew/' the speech, respectively, of an 
old schoolmaster and a village weaver, I attempt 
a perfect ideal background, the power and dreamy 
influence of nature in the one case, and the intense 
glow of great human emotion in the other. The 
" English Housewife's Gossip " lacks the back- 
ground, touches nowhere ou the great universal 
chords of sympathy, and is insomuch unsuccessful 
as a poem. The " Two Babes" is, even from my 
own favourable stand-point, a mixed business, of 
whose poetic merit I am by no means confident. 
It is on poems like " Willie Baird " and " Poet 
Andrew," and a few of the shorter pieces, that I 
should take my stand if I were forced to point to 
any of these poems as poetic successes, from the 
lofty modern point of view that I am at present 
taking. 

In " London Poems," I was at least a great 



ON MY OWN TENTATIVES. 303 

deal juster to the rude forces of life, my sym- 
pathy was bolder and more confident, my soul 
clearer and more trustworthy as a medium, how- 
ever poor might be my power of perfect artistic 
spiritualization. As common life was approached 
more closely, as the danger of vulgarity threat- 
ened more and more to interfere with the reader's 
sense of beauty, the stronger and tenderer was 
the lyrical note needed. 

Even in the unsung city's streets, 

Seem'd quiet wonders meet for serious song, 

Truth hard to phrase and render musical. 

For ah ! the weariness and weight of tears, 

The crying out to God, the wish for slumber, 

They lay so deep, so deep ! God heard them all ; 

He set them unto music of His own ; 

But easier far the task to sing of kings, 

Or weave weird ballads where the moon-dew glistens, 

Than body forth this life in beauteous sound. 

In writing such poems as " Liz " and " Nell/' 
the intensest dramatic care was necessary to es- 
cape vulgarity on the one hand, and false refine- 
ment on the other. " Liz," although the offspring 
of the very lowest social deposits, possesses great 
natural intelligence, and speaks more than once 



304 ON MY OWN TENTATIVES. 

with, a refinement consequent on strange purity 
of thought. Moreover, she has been under 
spiritual influences. She is a beautiful living 
soul, just conscious of the unfitness of the at- 
mosphere she is breathing ; but, above all, she is 
a large-hearted woman, with wonderful capacity 
for loving. She is on the whole quite an ex- 
ceptional study, although in many of her moods 
typical of a class. " Nell" is not so exceptional, 
and since it is harder to create types than eccen- 
tricities, her utterance was far more difficult 
to spiritualize into music. She is a woman quite 
without refined instincts, coarse, uncultured, im- 
pulsive. Her love, though profound, is insuffi- 
cient to escape mere commonplace ; and it was 
necessary to breathe around her the fascination 
of a tragic subject, the lurid light of an ever- 
deepening terror. 

In the language of both these poems I fol- 
lowed nature as closely as possible ; so far as 
poetic speech can follow ordinary speech. I had 
to add nothing, but merely (as a sympathetic 
critic happily expressed it) to " deduct whatever 
hid, instead of expressing*, the natural meaning of 



ON MY OWN TENTATIVES. 305 

the speakers ; " for to obtrude slips of grammar, 
mis-spellings, and other meaningless blotches, in 
short, to lay undue emphasis on the mere lan- 
guage employed, would have been wilfully to 
destroy the artistic verisimilitude of such poems. 
Every stronger stress, every more noticeable 
trick of style, added after the speech was suffi- 
cient to hint the quality of the speakers, was so 
much over- truth, offending against the truth's 
harmony. The object was, while clearly con- 
veying the caste of the speakers, to afford an ar- 
tistic insight into their souls, and to blend them 
with the great universal mysteries of life and death. 
Vulgarity obtruded is not truth spiritualized and 
made clear, but truth still hooded and masked, 
and little likely to reveal anything to the vision 
of its contemplators. 

By at least one critic I have been charged 
with idealizing the speech a little too much. 
Both "Liz" and "Nell," it is averred, occa- 
sionally speak in a strain very uncommon in 
their class. In reply to this I may observe how 
much mis-pronunciations, vulgarisms, and the 
like, have blinded educated people to the won- 



306 ON MY OWN TENTATIVES. 

derful force and picturesqueness of the language 
of the lower classes. They know nothing of the 
educated luxury of using language in order to 
conceal thought, but speak because they have 
something to say, and try to explain themselves 
as forcibly as possible. Take the talk of sailors, 
for example, even of the common smacks-men 
who live precarious lives upon our coasts. How 
full of picture, emphasis, fervour — everything 
but circumlocution. " There was a star i' the old 
moon's weather horn this morning ; nor I didn't 
much like the coppery clouds this dog-watch ." 
The speech of the lower classes in cities is not 
much less powerful and uncommon. Metaphor 
abounds to an extraordinary degree, and words 
are often chosen with a singular sense of sound. 
"And then," said an old Irish apple-woman to 
me, speaking of the death of her half-starved 
baby, " God's hand gript me round the heart, 
and sure I couldn't breathe or see." This, how- 
ever, is a subject too elaborate for discussion 
here, and must be reserved for a separate paper. 
It is difficult to satisfy all critics. By some 
my language has been thought over-refined ; by 



ON MY OWN TENTATIVES. 307 

others, it has been condemned as vulgar and 
inharmonious. The style of the ornate school 
of writers, where the melody of sweet syllables 
is essayed without constant reference to emotion 
or thought, has, I confess, but little fascination 
for me. I have usually, and perhaps too im- 
plicitly, trusted to the character of the emotion 
in order to produce poetic harmony. I have 
preferred the simplicity of truth, the vigor of 
simple speech, to all habitual finesse or fantastic 
elaboration. Words have been valuable to me 
purely as a means of expressing meaning, nor 
have I often introduced epithets or tricks of style, 
merely to satisfy the vulgarity of schoolmen. 

A far more serious charge than that concern- 
ing any mere question of style has been brought 
by genteel critics against poems such as those I 
have been discussing. It has been said that, 
under the form of dramatic soliloquy, the writer's 
own subjective spectacles have been sometimes 
put on the eyes of common-place people, thus 
crediting the speakers with sentimentalisms which 
have no existence out of the sphere of blind poetic 
sympathy. The sensations of Liz during her 



308 ON MY OWN TENTATIVES. 

one memorable visit to the country, the intense 
loving tenderness of the coarse woman Nell to- 
wards her brutal paramour, the exquisite delicacy 
and line spiritual vision of the old village school- 
master, the yearning for pastoral light and music 
in the heart of the old ballad-maker, all these, 
it is suggested, are over- elaborate sentimental- 
isms, too tender emotions accorded to people who, 
in reality, have very little sentiment or emotion 
to boast of. Thus, in a strain of critical gentility, 
writes the editor of the "Pall Mall Gazette," 
criticising the " Ballad-maker :" " Our present 
author would have us imagine that an exterior of 
squalor and rudeness is inevitably and incessantly 
accompanied by an abject arid querulous frame of 
mind. He is unwilling even to believe that a 
Londoner can for a moment forget or cease to be 
sick of the smoke and the strange faces that sur- 
round him. His imaginary sufferers moreover 
have a childish and literally lack-a- daisy longing to 
meet with the simplest country objects." !S"ow, of 
all the city poems I have written, there are four 
only which, from this profound point of view, can 
be considered querulous and lack-a-daisy. Two of 



ON MY OWN TENTATIVES. 309 

these, "The Starling" and "The Linnet/' are 
what I may call " bird poems/' companion pieces, 
where, by natural laws of association, and in very 
different ways, a caged starling and a caged 
linnet are made to flash upon their owners 
wild or bright glimpses of the outlying dis- 
tricts from which they come. The third poem, 
"The Ballad Maker," is clearly and avowedly 
the story of a man translated from the country 
to the town ; and naturally, being of a poetic and 
dreamy turn of mind, strangely impressed with 
the contrast. He is querulous : and why not ? 
But where is the querulousness, where the 
childish longing for country objects in Liz. Liz 
breathes happily only in the deep miasma of the 
city : a being possible only there ; knowing no- 
thing of light or sunshine, and caring to know 
nothing of these. She tries the country once, 
because she thinks that life is easier there ; but 
far from moving her to joy, the light and colour 
trouble her to intensest pain. 

I would not stay out yonder if I could, 

For one feels dead, and all looks pure and good : 

I could not bear a light so bright and still. 



310 ON MY OWN TENTATIVES. 

With these four poems the catalogue of such 
1 ' sentimentalities " may be brought to a close. 
In what, for instance, consists the sorrow of the 
Little Milliner who, far from drooping in the 
city, found there a constant round of joy from 
day to day : — 

And London streets, with all their noise and stir, 

Had many a pleasant sight to pleasure her. 

There were the shops, where wonders ever new, 

As in a garden, changed the whole year through. 

Oft would she stand, and watch, with laughter sweet, 

The punch and judy in the quiet street ; 

Or look and listen while soft minuets 

Play'd the street organ with the marionettes. 

Or join the motley group of merry folks 

Round the street huckster, with his wares and jokes. 

Fearless and glad, she joined the crowd that flows 

Along the streets at festivals and shows. 

In summer time she loved the parks and squares, 

Where fine folk drive their carriages and pairs. 

In winter time her blood was in a glow, 

At the white coming of the pleasant snow. 

And in the stormy nights, when dark rain pours, 

She found it pleasant, too, to sit in-doors, 

And sing, and sew, and listen to the gales, 

Or read the penny journal with the tales. 

It was clearly my endeavour, in this poem, to 



ON MY OWN TENTATIVES. 311 

evolve the fine Arcadian feeling out of the dullest 
obscurity, to show how even brick walls and 
stone houses may be made to blossom, as it were, 
into blooms and flowers ; — to produce by delicate 
passion and sweet emotion an effect similar to 
that which pastoral poets have produced by 
means of greenery and bright sunshine. In 
close connection with all that is dark and solitary 
in London life, the little milliner was to walk in 
a light such as lies on country fields, exhibiting, 
as a critic happily phrases it, "all the passion 
of youth, modulated by all the innocence of a 
naked baby." 

But my wish to vindicate certain artistic prin- 
ciples must not betray me further into detailed 
expositions of separate poems. I wish to offer 
a general explanation, not special panegyrics. 
One more word here, however, on the kind of 
dramatic soliloquy I have adopted in these pieces. 
In such individual utterance there is clearly a 
danger of one-sidedness, of crediting the world 
with the poet's own emotion, the more so as that 
emotion must interpenetrate more or less con- 
sciously with the actual emotion of the speaker, so 



312 ON MY OWN TENTATIVES. 

as to result in a conscientious and moving picture, 
with a faint though audible tone of lyric har- 
mony. The reader must not only see the truth, 
but see it through the novel medium of a poetic 
individuality. It may be a truth old as the hills, 
hoary with the snows of century after century, 
but it is only a poetic truth so far as the new 
mental light irradiates and transfigures it. If 
the world sees such figures as Liz, Nell, Poet 
Andrew, Meg Blane, through the troubled atmo- 
sphere of the writer's soul, let not the world com- 
plain that it sees them no longer under the dark 
loveless shadow in which they were previously 
perceived, if perceived at all. One cannot so 
clear that atmosphere as to bring it to the 
ambient purity and perfect veracity of God's 
own air. The poet, be he great dramatist, like 
Sophocles, or morbid dreamer, like Blake, cannot 
free himself wholly from the disturbing forces of 
his own heart. He has but one clue to the 
mystery, and that is his own individuality. " It 
is astonishing," says a loose but occasionally 
felicitous writer, "how large a harvest of new 
truths would be reaped simply through the acci- 



ON MY OWN TENTATIVE S. 313 

dent of a man's feeling, or being made to feel 
more deeply than other men. He sees the same 
objects, neither more nor fewer, bnt he sees them 
engraved in lines far stronger, and more deter- 
minate, and the difference in the strength makes 
the whole difference between consciousness and 
sub-consciousness. And in questions of the 
mere understanding, we see the same fact illus- 
trated. The author who wins notice the most, 
is not he that perplexes men by truths drawn 
from fountains of absolute novelty — truths as yet 
unsunned — and from that cause obscure; but he 
that awakens into illuminated consciousness, 
ancient lineaments of truth long slumbering in 
the mind, although too faint to have extorted 
attention." * And here is an explanation why, 
through all truly good and sane poetic art, runs 
that strange personal light which fascinates as 
music or style, and is the invariable characteristic 
of the true singer. 

I must not be understood as insisting that 
humble cotemporary life is the only legitimate 

* De Quincey on Yvordsworth's Poetry, page 260. 



314 ON MY OWN TENTATIVES. 

material of the modern poet. Strongly as I am 
convinced that the mighty reserve force, the 
ardent strength and sanity of this people, lies 
little acknowledged in the ranks of that class 
which is only just emerging into political power, 
firmly as I would indicate how exotic teachers 
have emasculated the youth and the flower of 
our schools and universities, I would yet be 
just to all co temporary life, social, political, 
moral. "Religion," says Goethe, "stands in 
the same relation to art as any other of the 
higher interests of life. It is a subject, and its 
rights are those of all other subjects/'' Yet 
how scantily are morality and religion repre- 
sented in modern art. Why, for instance, is our 
Christianity forgotten as a subject? "Where is the 
great poem, where the noble music built on that 
wondrous theme ? Milton, with all his power, 
is academic, not modern ; and, with the exception 
of a few faint utterances of Wordsworth, all our 
other religious poetry is conventional and in- 
artistic. 

We hear, indeed, the metallic periods of the 
didactic teacher, and the feeble wail of the 



ON MY OWN TENTATIVES. 315 

religious enthusiast, but seldom indeed are our 
nobler intellectual and spiritual strivings phrased 
into perfect song. The reticence of false culture 
steals over the lips of many who might instruct 
us deeply by their experience, who, if they do 
speak, are moved by the retrograde spirit of ano- 
ther civilization, and use the formal periods of an 
alien tongue. Why, in the name of our new gods, 
are we still to be bound by the fetters of Pro- 
metheus. We are, if not quite Celts, more Celts 
than Greeks, and, thank heaven, not altogether 
an intellectual nation. We have nothing in 
common with the Athenian civilization. In the 
same spirit that we demolished their monuments, 
to transport them piecemeal to our museums, we 
mutilate their language to carry it into our 
schools. In our clumsy attempts to imitate 
ancient art and literature, we seek in vain to hide 
the gait of the barbarian. Even our strongest 
natures fail at this task. They might be very 
admirable Englishmen if they did not aspire to 
be very intellectual Greeks. 

There is reason to apprehend that this tra- 
ditional intellectuality is melting away, and that 



316 ON MY OWN TENTATIVES. 

clearer and nobler forces are beginning to operate 
upon our young minds. <c Off, off, ye lendings ! " 
We are a modern people, slightly barbaric in 
matters of art ; but our natures have a glow of 
emotion quite unknown to the frigid spirit of 
Athenian inquiry. There is a great emotional 
and spiritual life yet unrepresented, there are 
rude forces not yet brought into play, but all of 
which must sooner or later have their place in 
art; and the indigenous product of our expe- 
rience, however inferior to other civilizations, is 
yet vastly superior to all exotics grafted on the 
weathered trunk of what was once a noble tree. 
In answer to thoughts like this, I have heard 
it urged that Art is not local but cosmopolitan, 
and that the artist should aim, as all great artists 
have aimed, at universality. It is true that the 
highest art owes its permanence to its universality, 
but it is also true that the intensity of the local 
insight, the keenness of the artist's apprehension 
of his own time, is the very cause that his work 
compasses universal truth ; since each man's 
spiritual experience, if rightly depicted, must 
correspond in numberless soul-touching particu- 



ON MY OWN TENTATIVES. 317 

lars, with the combined experience of the world. 
There is no catholicity, no universality, no true 
art, to be got by chill aiming at these things ; 
they are the product of individual natures, acted 
upon by the great forces of the world and the 
period. It is nonsense to point to Greek art, 
especially Greek sculpture, as ' c universal" in the 
sense of non-nationality. Nothing can be more 
Greek, and that is why nothing can be more 
great. 

But I must draw these remarks to the close. 
The conclusion of the whole matter, as affecting 
poets and poetry, is this, that although there 
may be high and good poetry moving in a 
limited range of sympathy, the very highest 
and best poetry is the poetry which appeals to 
most classes of the state, through those universal 
chords which communicate with all hearts alike. 
(Shakespeare, Chaucer, Burns) . A true poem of 
this sort has a side for the uncultivated, another 
for the refined ; a body and soul that reach down 
to the heart's beatings, and up to the very heaven 
of mysteries. It is virtually inexhaustible — large, 
typical, human. I can congratulate myself on 



318 ON MY OWN TENTATIVES. 

having attempted, however humbly,, to touch this 
poetry of humanity ; but the appreciation of my 
own mere tentatives in this direction is of far less 
importance to me than the welfare of English art 
generally, and the vindication of its place in 
European progress. 

Caetera, quae vaeuas tenuissent carmina mentis, 
Omnia jam vulgata. Quis aut Eurysthea durum, 
Aut illaudati nescit Busiridis aras ? 
Cui non dictus Hylas puer, Latonia Delos ? 
Hippodameque, humerdque Pelops insignis eburno, 
Acer'equis ? Tentanda via est, qua me quoque possim 
Tollere humo, victorque virum volitare per ora ! 

Vir. Georg. III. 3. 



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artistic beauty; and, when the holydays arc over, to be placed for frequent 
and affectionate consultation on a favourite shelf." — Atheneeum. 

Schiller's Lay of the Bell. Sir E. Biilwer Lytton's translation; 
beautifully illustrated by forty-two wood Engravings, drawn by Thomas 
Scott, and engraved by J. D. Cooper, a.tcr the Etchings by Retszch. 
Oblong 4to. cloth extra. 14s. ; morocco, 25s. 

Pictures of Society, Grave and Gay : comprising One Hundred 

Engravings on Wood. Handsomely bound in cloth, with an elaborate 
ovel Design, by Messrs. Leighton and Co. Royal Bvo. price 21s. 

An Entirely New Edition of Edgar A. Poe's Poems. Illustrated 

inent Artists. Small 4to. cloth extra, price 10s. 6J. 
A Histor}' of Lace, from the Earliest Period; with upwards of 
One Hundred Illustrations and Coloured Designs. By Mrs. Bury Palliser. 
One volume, 8vo. choicely bound in cloth. Sir. 6d. 



List of Publications. 



The Bayard Series. 

CHOICE COMPANIONABLE BOOKS 
FOR HOME AND ABROAD, 

COMPRISING 

HISTORY, BIOGRAPHY, TRAVEL, ESSAYS, 
NOVELETTES, ETC. 

Which, under an Editor of known taste and ability, will be very 
choicely printed at the Chiswick Press ; with Vignette Title-page, 
Notes, and Index ; the aim being to insure permanent value, as 
well as present attractiveness, and to render each volume an ac- 
quisition to the libraries of a new generation of readers. Size, a 
handsome 16mo. bound flexible in cloth extra, gilt edges, 
averaging about 220 pages. 

Each Volume, complete in itself, price Half-a-crown. 

The earlier Volumes consist of 

THE STORY OF THE CHEVALIER BAYARD. From 

the French of the Loyal Servant, M. de Berville, and others. By E. 
Walford. With Introduction and Notes by the Editor. 

" Praise of him must walk the earth 
For ever, and to noble deeds give birth. 
This is the happy warrior; this is he 
That every man in arms would wish to be." — Wordsicorth. 

THE ESSAYS OF ABRAHAM COWLEY. Comprising all 

his Prose Works ; the Celebrated Character of Cromwell, Cutter of Cole- 
man Street, &c. &c. With Life, Notes, and Illustrations by Dr. Hurd and 
others. Newly edited. 

" Cowley's prose stamps him as a man of genius, and an improver of the 
English language." — Thos. Campbell. 

ABD ALLAH AND THE FOUR-LEAVED SHAMROCK. 

By Edouard Laboullaye, of the French Academy. Translated by Mary 
L. Booth. 

One of the noblest and pztrest French stories ever icritten. 

SAINT LOUIS, KING OF FRANCE. The curious and 

characteristic Life of this Monarch by De Joinville. Translated by 
James Hutton. 

" A king, a hero, and a man." — Gibbon. 

TABLE-TALK AND OPINIONS OF NAPOLEON THE 

GREAT. A compilation from the best sources of this great man's 
shrewd and often prophetic thoughts, forming the best inner life of the 
most extraordinary man of modern times. 



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The Gentle Life Series. 

Printed in Elzevir, on Toned Paper, and handsomely bound, 
forming suitable Volumes for Presents. 

Price 6s. each; or in calf extra, price 10s. 6d. 

I. 
THE GENTLE LIEE. Essays in Aid of the Formation of 
Character of Gentlemen and Gentlewomen. Seventh Edition. 

" His notion of a gentleman is of the noblest and truest order 

The volume is a capital specimen of what may be done by honest reason, 
high feeling, and cultivated intellect. . . . A little compendium of 
cheerful philosophy." — Daily News. 

" Deserves to be printed in letters of gold, and circulated in every 
house." — Chambers's Journal. 

" The writer's object is to teach people to be truthful, sincere, generous ; 
to be humble-minded, but bold in thought and action." — Spectator. 

-Full of truth and persuasiveness, the look is a valuable composition 
and one to whichthe reader will often turn for companionship." — Morning 
Post. 

" It is v:ith the more satisfaction that ice meet icith a neic essayist who 
delights without the smallest pedantry to quote the choicest wisdom of our 
forefathers, and who abides by those old-fashioned Christian ideas of duty 
which Steele and Addison, wits and men of the world, were not ashamed to 
set before the young Englishmen of 1713." — London Review. 

'■'Altogether the book is sterling; admirable both for its sound sense, 
freedom from sentimentality, and yet thoroughly Christian in feeling as 
well as principle." — Literary Churchman. 

II. 
ABOUT IN THE WORLD. Essays by the Author of « The 

Gentle Life." 

" It is not easy to open it at any page icithout finding some happy idea." 
Morning Post. 

" Another characteristic merit of these essays is. that they make it their 
business, gently but firmly, to apply the qualifications and the corrections, 
which all philant/nxpic theories, all general rules or maxims, or principles, 
stand in need of before you can make them work." — Literary Churchman. 

" More exquisite and finished writing, deeper and more subtle thought, 
calmer and more comprehensive judgments have been reserved to produce 
'About in the World.'" — Public Opinion. 

III. 
FAMILIAR WORDS. An Index Verborum, or Quotation 
Handook. Affording an immediate Reference to Phrases and Sentences 
that have become embedded in the English language. Second and en- 
larged Edition. 

" Tie most extensive dictionary of quotation we have met with.** — Notes 
and Queries. 

" Should be on every library table, by the side of Bogefs Thesaurus.'" 
— Daily News. 

" 117// add to the author's credit with all honest workers." — Examiner. 

•' A valuable book." — London Review. 

"Almost every familiar quotation is to be found in this work, which 
forms a book of reft rence absolutely indispensable to the literary man. and 
of interest and se~i vice to the public generally. Mr. /""riswell has cur best 
ifumks for his painstaking, laborious, and conscientious work." — Ci;; 



List of Publications. 



IV. 

LIKE UNTO CHRIST. A new translation of the " Do Imita- 
tione Christi," usually ascribed to Thomas & Kerapis. With a Vignette 
from an Original Drawing by Sir Thomas Lawrence. 

" Think of the little work of Thomas a Rem pis, translated into a 
hundred languages, and sold by millions of copies, and which, in inmost 
moments of deep thought, men makethe guide of their hearts, and the friend 
of their closets." — Archbishop of York, at the Literary Fund, 1865. 

" Could not be presented in a more exquisite form, for a mure sightly 
volume was never seen." — Illustrated London News. 

"An admirable version of an excellent book. Not only is the translation 
a thoroughly idiomatic one, but the volume itself is a specimen of beautiful 
typography. The foot-notes contain numerous and useful references to 
authorities; and interesting examples of various readings." — Reader. 

" The preliminary essay is well-written, good, and interesting." — 
Saturday Review. 

" Evinces independent scholarship, a profound feeling for the original, 
and a minute attention to delicate shades of expression, which may well 
make it acceptable even to those who can enjoy the work without a trans- 
lator's aid." — Nonconformist. 

V. 
ESSAYS BY MONTAIGNE. Edited, Compared, Revised, and 

Annotated by the Author of " The Gentle Life." With Vignette Portrait. 

" The present edition of Montaigne is a charming specimen of typo- 
graphy, and does great credit to its publishers. Such an edition of Mon- 
taigne has long been wanting.'" — Press. 

•' The reader really gets in a compact form all of the charming, c/iatty 
Montaigne that he needs to know." — Observer. 

"This edition is pure of questionable matter, and its perusal is calculated 
to enrich without corrupting the mind of the reader." — Daily News. 

" We should be glad if any words of ours could help to bespeak a large 
circulation for this handsome attractive book ; and who can refuse his 
homage to the good-humoured industry of the editor." — Illustrated Times 

VI. 

THE COUNTESS OF PEMBROKE'S ARCADIA. Written 

by Sir Philip Sidney. Edited, with Notes,by the Author of "The Gentle 
Life." Dedicated, by permission, to the Earl of Derby. 7s. 6rf. 

" All the best things in the Arcadia are retained intact in Mr. Frisivell's 
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" The book is now presented to the modern reader in a shape the most 
likely to be acceptable in these days of much literature and fastidious taste." 
— Daily News. 

" It is a good icork, therefore,-to have republished the Arcadia in the 
elegant form in which it now lies before us, and our acknowledgments are 
due both to publisher and editor; — to the publisher for the extremely graceful 
form in which the book appears ; — to the editor for the care he has bestowed 
upon the text and its literary illustration. The subsequent additions to the 
Arcadia by Sir W. Alexander, by W. B., and by Mr. Johnstone, are all 
rejected. Other interpolations have been cut down, if not entirely cut out. 
Obsolete icords and usages are commented on in succinct notes, and there is 
an alphabetical index to all such explanations, so as to give the edition as 
much philological value as possible." — Literary Churchman. 

"It icas in itself a thing so interesting as a development of English 
literature, that ice are thankful to Mr. Friswellfor reproducing, in a very 
elegant volume, the chief work of the gallant and chivalrous, the gay yet 
learned knight, who patronized the muse of Spenser, and fell upon the 
bloody fi eld of Zutphen, leaving behind him a light of heroism and humane 
compassion which would shed an eternal glory on his name, though all he 
ever wrote had perished with himself."— London Review. 



Sampson Low and Co.'s 



VI. 
THE GENTLE LIFE. Second Series. 

" There is not a single thought in the volume that does not contribute in 
some measure to the formation of a true gentleman." — Daily News. 

" TT7// refresh the purest sad, and do much to inform the general 
reader." — Press. 

" These charming collection of essays." — London Review. 

" There is the same mingled poiver and simplicity ichich makes the 
author so emphatically a first-rate essayist, giving a fascination in each 
essay ichich will make this volume at least as pop/ular as its elder brother." 
—Star. 

" These essays are amongst the best in our language." — Public Opinion. 

VIII. 
VARIA : Readings from Rare Books. Reprinted, by permis- 
sion, from the Saturday Review, Spectator, &c. Crown 8vo. 6s. 

Contexts:— The Angelic Doctor, Nostradamus, Thomas a Kempis, 
Dr. John Faustus, Quevedo. Mad. Guyon, Paracelsus, Howell the 
Traveller, Michael Scott, Lodowick Muggleton, Sir Thomas Browne 
George Psalmanazar, The Highwaymen, The Spirit World. 

" An extremely pretty and agreeable volume. We can strongly recom- 
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Guardian. 

" The books discussed in this volume are no less valuable than they are 
rare, but life is not long enough to allow a reader to wade through such thick 
folios, and therefore the compiler is entitled to the gratitude of the public 
for having sifted their contents, and thereby rendered tfieir treasures avail- 
able to the general reader:' — Observer. 

" The same scholarly style ichich distinguished the earlier volumes is 
clearly distinguishable here. The author has the excellent gift of uniting, 
in a very high degree, the charm ichich interests icith the power which in- 
structs." — Observer. 

IX. 

A CONCORDANCE OR VERBAL INDEX to the whole of 

Milton's Poetical Works. Comprising upwards of 20.000 References. 
By Charles D. Cleveland, LL.D. With Vignette Portrait of Milton. 
1 vol. small post, printed on toned paper, at the Chiswick Press, tis. 

*»* This work affords an immediate reference to any passage in any 
edition of Milton's Poems, to which it may be justly termed an indis- 
pensable Appendix. 

" An elegant volume, and, so far as a short tise of it gives one a right to 
pronounce, fully to be depended upon." — Illustrated Times. 

" An invahu'ible Index, which the publishers have done a public service 
in rejmnting." — Notes and Queries. 

" By the admirers of Milton the book icill be highly appreciated, but its 
chief value ivill, if we mistake not, be found in the fact that it is a compact 
word-book of the English language." — Record. 

" Anncers honestly to its title, and is well-printed, portable, and con- 
venient." — Guardian. 



THE SILENT HOUR. Essays for Sundav Reading, Original 
and Selected. By the Author of " The Gentle Life." 



List of Publications. 




LITERATURE, WORKS OF REFERENCE AND 
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^^ AVID GRAY, and other Essays on Poetry and Poets. 
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The Book of the Sonnet : being Selections, with an 

Essay on Sonnets and Sonneteers, by the late Leigh Hunt. 

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18s. 

Poems of the Inner Life. Selected chiefly from modern Authors, 

by permission. Small post 8vo. 6s. ; gilt edges, 6s. 6d. 

Life Portraits of Shakspeare ; with an Examination of the 
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Illustrated by Photographs of authentic and received Portraits. Square 
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Richmond and its Inhabitants, from the Olden Time. With 
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The Complete Poetical Works of John Milton, with a Life of the 
Author : and a Verbal Index containing upwards of 20,000 references to 
all the Poems. By Charles Dexter Cleveland. New Edition. 8vo. 12s. 

Her Majesty's Mails : a History of the Post Office, and an 
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" In conclusion, we have only to say that Mr. Lexcins's book is a most 
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young Englishman and foreigner desiring to know how our institutions 
grow." — Reader. 

The Origin and History of the English Language, and of the 
early literature it embodies. By the Hon. George P. Marsh. U. S. 
Minister at Turin, Author of " Lectures on the English Language." 
8vo. cloth extra, 16s. 

Lectures on the English Language; forming the Introductory 
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condition of the globe we inhabit. In four divisions of his work, Mr. 
Marsh traces the histoiy of human industry as shown in the extensive 
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waters, and the sands; and, in a concluding chapter, he discusses the pro- 
bable and possible geographical changes yet to be wrought, 2 he whole of 
Mr. Mirsh's book is an eloquent showing of the duty of care in the estab- 
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life, and the salubrity of the climate, on which ice have to depend for the 
physical well-being of mankind." — Examiner. 



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The Handy-book of Patent and Copyright Law, English and 
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A Concise Summary of the Law of English and French Copyright 
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works of interest to Great Britain, with the size, price, place, date 
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2s. <5d. Also Supplement, 1837-60. 8vo. 6d. 

Dr. Worcester's New and Greatly Enlarged Dictionary of the 
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Lexicon." — Athenaum. 

The Publishers' Circular, and General Record of British and 
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The Ladies' Reader : with some Plain and Simple Bules and In- 
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cution." Fcap. 8vo. Cloth, 5s. 



List of Publications. 



The Clerical Assistant : an Elocutionary Guide to the Reading 
of the Scriptures aud the Liturgy, several passages being marked for 
Pitch and Emphasis : with some Observations on Clerical Bronchitus. 
By George Vandenhoff, M.A. Fcap. 8vo. Cloth, 3s. 6d. 

The Art of Elocution as an essential part of Rhetoric, with in- 
structions in Gesture, and an Appendix of Oratorical, Poetical and Dra- 
matic extracts. By George Vandenhoff, M A. Third Edition. 5s. 

An English Grammar. By Matthew Green. New edition re- 
vised. 12mo. cloth, Is. 6d. 

Latin-English Lexicon, by Dr. Andrews. New Edition. 8vo. 18s. 

The superiority of this justly-famed Lexicon is retained over all others 
by the fulness of its quotations, the including in the vocabulary proper 
names, the distinguishing whether the derivative is classical or otherwise, 
the exactness of the references to the original authors, and in the price. 

" Every prrge bears the impress of industry and care." — Atheneeum. 

" Ttie best Latin Dictionary, whether for the scholar or advanced stu- 
dent ."—Spectator . 

" We never saw such a book published at such a price." — Examiner. 

The Farm and Fruit of Old From Virgil. By a Market Gar- 
dener. Is. 

Usque ad Ccelum ; or, the Dwellings of the People. By Thomas 
Hare, Esq., Barrister- at- Law. Fcap. Is. 

A Few Hints on proving Wills, &c, without professional assist- 
ance. By a Probate-Court Official. Fcap. cloth, 6d. 

A Handbook to the Charities of London. By Sampson Low, 
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The Charities of London : an Account of the Origin, Operations, 
and general Condition of the Charitable, Educational, and Religious 
Institutions of Loudon. By Sampson Low, Jun. 8th publication (com- 
menced 1836). With an Alphabetical Summary of the whole corrected 
to April, 1867. Cloth, os. 

Prince Albert's Golden Precepts. Second Edition, with Photo- 
graph. A Memorial of the Prince Consort; comprising -Maxims and 
' Extracts from Addresses of His late Royal Highness. Many now for 
the first time collected and carefully arranged. With an Index. Royal 
16mo. beautifully printed on toned paper, cloth, gilt edges, 2s. 6d. 

Our Little Ones in Heaven : Thoughts in Prose and Verse, se- 
lected from the Writings of favourite Authors ; with Frontispiece after 
Sir Joshua Reynolds. Fcap. 8vo. cloth extra, 3s. 6d. 

Six Essays on Commons Preservation. Written in Competition 
for Prizes offered by Henry W. Peek, Esq. 
By John M. Maidlow, M.D. Lincoln's Inn, Barrister at Law, (to whom the 
first Prize was awarded). 
William Phipson Beale, Lincoln's Inn, (to whom the second Frize was 

awarded). 
F. Octavius Crump, Middle Temple. 
Henry Hicks Hocking, St. John's College, Oxford. 
Robert Hunter, M.A. Loudon University. 
Edgar H. Lockhart, M.A. Lincoln's Inn. 



J Sampson Low and Co.'s 

Rural Essays. With Practical Hints on Farming and Agricul- 
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NEW BOOKS FOR YOUNG PEOPLE. 

W&& TORIES of the Gorilla Country. By P. Du Chaillu, 
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a-j^-fc^ Last Rambles amongst the Indians beyond the Rocky 
Mountains and the Andes. By George Catlin ; with numerous Illus- 
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Life amongst the Indians. An entirely New Edition, by the same 

Author. Crown Svo. 5s. 

Alwyn Morton ; his School and Schoolfellows. A Story of 
St. Nicholas' Grammar School. Crown Svo. with Illustrations. 5s. 

Queer Little People. By Harriet Beecher Sfowe, Author of 
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A Bushel of Merry Thoughts. By "William Busch. Described 
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The Story without an End. From the German of Carove, by 

Sarah Austin. Illustrated with 16 Original Drawings by E. V. B. 
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[Shortly. 
Also, Cheap Edition. Illustrated by Harvey. Fcap. 16mo. cloth extra, 
2s. 6a!. 
41 Of its kind one of the best books th \t wis ever written." 

Quarterly Review, Jan. 1867. 

The Marvels of Optics. Bv E. Marion. Translated and edited 
by C. W. Quin. With 60 Illustrations. Small post &vo. cloth extra. 

[Shortly. 

Thunder and Lightning. Translated from the Erench of Le 
Fouvielle, by Dr. T. L. Fhipson. With 3S- full-page Woodcuts. Sim. 11 
post 8vo. cloth extra. [Shortly 

The Silver Skates 5 a Story of Holland Life. Edited by "VY. H. G. 
Kingston. Illustrated, small post Svo. cloth extra, 3s. 6d. 

Tie Boy's Own Book of Boats. By W. H. G. Kingston. Blus- 
trations by E. Weedon. engraved by W. J. Linton. An Entirelyi-New 
Edition. Fcap. 8vo. cloth. 3s 6d. 
" This well-written, well-wrought book." — Athenaeum. 

Also by the same Author, 
Ernest Bracebridge: or. Boy's Own Bock of Sports. 3s. 6rf. 
The Fire Ships. A Story of the Fays of Lord Cochrane. 5s. 
The Cruise of the Frolic, bs. 
Jack Buntline : the Life of a Sailor Boy. 2s. 

The Voyage of the Constance; a tale of the Polar Seas. By 
Mary Gillies. Kew Edition, with 8 Illustrations by Charles Ketne. i cup. 
3s. 6d. 



List of Publications. 11 

The True History of Dame Perkins and her Grey Mare. Told 

for the Countryside and the Fireside. By Lindon Meadows. With Eight 
Coloured Illustrations by Phiz. Small 4to. cloth, 5s. 

Great Fun Stories. Told by Thomas Hood and Thomas Archer 
to 48 coloured pictures of Edward Wehnert. Beautifully printed ia 
colours, 10s. 6J. Plain, 6s. well bound in cloth, gilt edges. 

Or in Eight separate books. Is. each, coloured. 6d. plain. 
The Cherry-coloured Cat. The Live Rocking- Horse. Master Mis- 
chief. Cousin Nellie. Harry High-Stepper. Grandmamma's Spectacles. 
How the House was Built. Dog Toby. 

Great Fun and More Fun for our Little Friends. By Harriet 
Myrtle. With Edward Wehnert's Pictures. 2 vols, each 5s. 

Under the Waves; or the Hermit Crab in Society. By Annie 
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4s. ; gilt edges, 4s. 6d. 

Also beautifidly Illustrated : — 

Little Bird Red aud Little Bird Blue. Coloured, 5s. 

Snow-Flakes, and what they told the Children. Coloured, os. 

Child's Book of the Sagacity of Animals. 5s. ; or coloured, 7s. 6d. 

Child's Picture Fable Book. 5s. ; or coloured, 7s. 6d. 

Child's Treasury of Story Books. 5s. ; or coloured, 7s. 6rf. 

The Nursery Playmate. 200 Pictures. 5s. ; or coloured, 9s. 

How to Make Miniature Pumps and a Fire-Engine : a Book for 
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Emily's Choice ; an Australian Tale. By Maud Jeanne Franc, 
Author of '• Vermont Vale," &c. Small post 8vo. 5s. 

Vermont Vale ; or, Home Pictures in Australia. By Maud 
Jeanne Franc. Small post 8vo, with a frontispiece, eloth extra, 5s. 

Marian ; or, the Light of some one's Home. By Maud Jeanne 
Franc. Small post 8vo. os. • 

Golden Hair; a Story for Young People. By Sir Lascelles 
Wraxall, Bart. With Eight full page Illustrations, 5s. 

Also, same price, full of Illustrations : — 
Black Panther; a Boy's Adventures among the Red Skins. 
Stanton Grange ; or, Boy's Life at a Private Tutor's. By the Rev. C. J. 
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Paul Duncan's Little by Little ; a Tale for Boys. Edited by 
Frank Freeman. With an Illustration by Charles Keene. Fcap. 8vo. 
cloth 2s. ; gilt edges, 2s. 6d. Also, same price, 

Boy Missionary; a Tale for Young People. By Mrs. J. M. Parker. 
Difficulties Overcome. By Miss Brightwell. 

The Babes in the Basket : a Tale in the West Indian Insurrection. 
Jack Buntliue ; the Life of a Sailor Boy. By W. H. G. Kingston. 

The Swiss Family Robinson; or, the Adventures of a Father and 
Mother and Four Sons on a Desert Island. With Explanatory Notes and 
Illustrations. First and Second Series. New Edition, complete in one 
volume, 3s. 6d. 



12 Sampson Low and Co.'s 

Geography for my Children. By Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe. 
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Illustrations. Cloth extra, 4s. 6d. 

Stories of the Woods ; or, the Adventures of Leather-Stocking : 
A Book for Boys, compiled from Cooper's Series of " Leather-Stocking 
Tales." Fcap. cloth, Illustrated, 5s. 

Child's Play Illustrated with Sixteen Coloured Drawings by 
E. V. B., printed in fac-simile by W. Dickes' process, and ornamented 
•with Initial Letters. New edition, with India paper tints, royal 8vo. 
cloth extra, bevelled cloth, 7s. 6d. The Original Edition of this work 
was published at One Guinea. 

Child's Delight. Forty-two Songs for the Little Ones, with 

forty-two Pictures. Is. ; coloured, 2s. 6d. 

Goody Platts, and her Two Cats. By Thomas Miller. Fcap. 
8vo. cloth, Is. 

Little Blue Hood : a Story for Little People. By Thomas Miller, 
with coloured frontispiece. Fcap. 8vo. cloth, 2s. 6d. 

Mark Willson's First Reader. By the Author of " The Picture 
Alphabet" and " The Picture Primer." With 120 Pictures. Is. 

The Picture Alphabet ; or Child's First Letter Book. With new 
and original Designs. &/. 

The Picture Primer. 6d. 



HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY. 

HE Life of John James Audubon, the Naturalist, in- 
cluding his Romantic Adventures in the back woods of 
America. Correspondence with celebrated Europeans, &c. 
Edited, fr3in materials supplied by his widow, by Robert Bu- 
chanan. 8vo. [Shortly. 

Madame Becamier, Memoirs and Correspondence of. Trans- 
lated from the French and edited by J. M. Luyster. With Portrait. 
Crown 8vo. 7s. 6d. 

The Conspiracy of Count Fieschi : an Episode in Italian History. 
By M. De Celesia. Translated by David Hilton. Esq., Author of a 
" History of Brigandage." With Portrait. 8vo. 12s. 

" 771?* work will he rend with great interest, and will assist in a com- 
prehensive study of Italian history." — Observer. 

" As can epitome of Genoese history for thirty years it is erceedingly in- 
teresting, as uell us exceedingly able. 1 he English public are greatly 
indebted to Mr. Wheeler for introducing to them a historian so full of 
verve, so expert, and so graceful in the manipulation of facts." — London 
Review. 

" This rigorous Memoir of Count Gianluigi Fieschi. uritten in excellent 
Italian, is here reproduced in capital English." — Examiner. 

Christian Heroes in the Army and Navy. By Charles Rogers, 
LL.D. Author of 14 Lyra Britannica." Crcwn Svo. 3s. 6d. 




List of Publications. 1 3 



The Navy of the United States during- the Rebellion ; comprising 
the origin and increase of the Ironclad Fleet. By Charles B. Boynton, 
D.D. 2 vols. 8vo. Illustrated with numerous plain and coloured En- 
gravings of the more celebrated vessels. Vol. I. now ready. 20s. 

A History of America, from the Declaration of Independence of 
the thirteen United States, to the close of the campaign of 1778. By 
George Bancrott; forming the third volume of the History of the Ame- 
rican Revolution. 8vo. cloth, 12s. 

A History of Brigandage in Italy; with Adventures of the 
more celebrated Brigands. By David Hilton, Esq. 2 vols, post 8vo. 
cloth, 16s. 

A History of the Gipsies, with Specimens of the Gipsy Language. 
By Walter Simson. Post 8vo, 10s. 6d. 

A History of West Point, the United States Military Academy 
and its Military Importance. By Capt. E. C. Boynton, A.M. With 
Plans and Illustrations. 8vo. 21s. 

The Twelve Great Battles of England, from Hastings to Waterloo. 
With Plans, fcap. 8vo. cloth extra, 3s. 6d. 

George Washington's Life, by Washington Irving. 5 vols, 
royal 8vo. 12s. each Library Illustrated Edition. 5 vols. Imp. 8vo. U. 4s. 

Plutarch's Lives. An entirely new Library Edition, carefully 
revised and corrected, with some Original Translations by the Editor. 
Edited by A H. Clough, Esq sometime Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford, 
and late Professor of English Language and Literature at University 
College. 5 vols. 8vo. cloth. 21. 10s. 

" ' Plutarch' s Lives ' will be read by thousands, and in the version of Mr. 
Clough. " — Quarterly Review. 

" Mr. dough's work is worthy of all praise, and we hope that it will 
tend to revive the study of Plutarch." — Times. 

Life of John Adams, 2nd President of the United States, by C. 
F. Adams. 8vo. lis. Life and Works complete, 10 vols. 14s. each. 

Life and Administration of Abraham Lincoln. Pcap. 8vo. 
stiff cover, Is. ; with map, speeches, &c. crown 8vo. 3s. 6c?. 

The Prison Life of Jefferson Davis ; embracing Details and 
Incidents in his Captivity, together with Conversations on Topics of 
great Public Interest. By John J. Craven, M.D., Physician of the 
Prisoner during his Confinement. 1 vol. post 8vo. price 8s. 

The Life and Correspondence of Benjamin Silliman, M.D., 
LL.D., late Professor cf Chemistry, Mineralogy, and Geology in Yale 
College, U.S.A. Chiefly from his own MSS. and Diary. By George 
Fisher. With Portrait. 2 vols, post 8vo. price 24s. 

Six Months at the White House with Abraham Lincoln: the 
Story cf a Picture. By F. B. Carpenter. 12mo. 7s. 6d. 




14 Sampson Low and Oo.'s 



TRAVEL AND ADVENTURE. 

\?£ OCIAL Life of the Chinese : a Daguerreotype of Daily 

Life in China. Condensed from the Work of the Eev. J. Don- 
little, by the Rev. Paxton Hood. With above 100 Illustra- 
tions. Post 8vo. [Nearly ready. 
" The bock before us supplies a large quantity of minute and valuable 
information concerning a country of high commercial and national import- 
ance, and as to which the amount of popular information is even more tfian 
ordinarily scanty. The author speaks with the authority of an eye-witness ; 
and the minuteness of detail which his work exhibits will, to most readers, 
go far to establish its trustworthiness.'' — Saturday Review. 

" We have no hesitation in saying that from these pags-s may be gathered 
wore information about the social life of the Chinese than can be obtained 
from any other source. The importance of the work as a key to a right 
understanding of the character of so vast a portion of the human race ought 
to insure it an extensive circulation." — Athenaeum. 

The Open Polar Sea: a Narrative of a Voyage of Discovery 
towards the North Pole. By Dr. Isaac I. Hayes. An entirely new and 
cheaper edition. With Illustrations. Small post 8vo. 6s. 

" The story of this last Arctic enterprise is most stirring, and it is well 
for Dr. H.yes's literary venture that this is the case, for it must be con- 
ceded that the great number of works on Arctic voyages has somewhat dulled 
the edge of curiosity with which they were formerly received by the public ; 
but a spell of fascination will ever cling to the narrative of brave and ad- 
venturous travel, and Dr. Hayes's heroism and endurance are of no com- 
mon order. . . . This was the crowning feat of Dr. Hayes's enterprise. 
He set up a cairn, within which he deposited a record, stating that after a 
toilsome march of forty -six days from his winter harbour, he stood on the 
shores of the Polar basin, on the most northerly land ever reached by man. 
The latitude attained was 81 deg. 35 mm.; that reached by Parry over the 
ice was 82 deg. 45 min. . . . What we have said <f Dr. Hayes's book 
will, we trust, send many readers to its pages." -Athenaeum. 

Letters on England. By M. Louis Blanc. Two Series, 
each 2 vols. 16s. 

" These sparkling letters written on and within ' Old England' by a wit, 
a scholar, and a gentleman." — Athenn?um. 

" Letteis full of epigram, and of singular clearness and sense." — 
Spectator. 

" The author is very fair in his opinions of English habits. English in- 
stitutions, and English jmblic men ; his eulogy is discriminating, and his 
censures are for the most part such as Englishmen themselves must acknow- 
ledge to be just."— Saturday Review. 

'"' Perhaps the very cleverest sketches in this clever and amusing book are 
his short, pithy, graphic summaries of persons and characters. His con- 
trasts especially are very effect inly done. The book is well worth reading, 
and is full of suggestive thought and pointed writing." — Guardian. 

" He never conceals his admiration for the au-pervading liberty of 
Britain, and he points out with incisive distinctness our failure to realize 
its great fruits, as well as otherwise to fulfil our national destiny. What- 
ever he touches, whether it be to us a glory or a disgrace, he illuminates it, 
and brings it distinctly before the gaze, that ice and others may cht rish it 
or flee from it." — Daily News. 

Brazil and the Brazilians. Pourtrayerl in Historical and Des- 
criptive Sketches by the Rev. James C. Fletcher and the Rev. D. P. 
Kidder, D. D. An enlargement of the original work, presenting' the 
Material and Moral Progress of the Empire during the last Ten Years, 
and the results of the Authors' recent Explorations on the Amazon to 
the verge of Peru. With 150 Illustrations. Svo. cloth extra. 18s. 

The Old Country. Its Scenery, Art, and People. By James M. 
Hoppin. 1 vol. small post 8vo. 7s. 6d. 



List of Publications. 15 

The Black Country and its Green Border Land ; or, Expedi- 
tions and Explorations rouud Birmingham, Wolverhampton, &c. By 
Elihu Burritt. [Nearly ready. 

A Walk from London to the Land's End. By Elihu Burritt, 
Author of " A Walk from London to John O'Groats ;" with sever.il Illus- 
trations. Small post Svo. 6s. Uniform with the cheaper edition of 
" John O'Groats." 

A Walk from London to John O'Groats. With Notes by the 
Way. By Elihu Burritt. Second and cheaper edition. With Photogra- 
phic Portrait of the Author. Small post 8vo. 6s. 

New Paris Guide. Paris. Par les Principaux Ecrivains et 
Artistes de la France. Premiere Partie — Le Science, l'Art. 2 vols. 
10s. each. Sold separately. 

" It appears to be such a Guide as no other capital can boast ; the in- 
tellect of Paris employed in the faithful illustration of the form and spirit 
of the town, and the chief things that are in it ; an encyclopaedia Oi Paris, 
by the most competent hands, free from encyclopaedic dullness, readable 
as a romance, instructive as a dictionary, full of good pictures, and so 
cheap that little less than the great sale it deserves can pay what must 
have been the cost of its production." — Examiner. 

The Diamond Guide to Paris. 320 pages, with a Map and up- 
wards of 100 Illustrations. Cloth, 2s. 6d. 

Travelling in Spain in the Present Day. By Henry Blackburn. 

With numerous illustrations. Square post 8vo, cloth extra, 16s. 

The Voyage Alone; a Sail in the " Yawl, Rob Roy." By John 
M'Gregor, Author of " A Thousand Miles in the Rob Boy Canoe. With 
Illustrations. [Shortly. 

A Thousand Miles in the Rob Roy Canoe, on Rivers and Lakes 
of Europe. By John Macgregor, M.A. Fifth edition. With a map, 
and numerous Illustrations. Fcap. 8vo. cloth, 5s. 

The Rob Roy on the Baltic A Canoe Voyage in Norway, Sweden, 
&c. By John Macg.-egor, M.A. With a Map and numerous Illus- 
trations. Fcap. Svo. 5s. 

Description of the New Rob Roy Canoe, built for a Voyage 
through Norway, Sweden, and the Baltic. Dedicated to the CanoeCiub 
by the Captain. With Illustrations. Price Is. 

Captain Hall's Life with the Esquimaux. New and cheaper 

Edition, with Coloured Engravings and upwards of 100 Woodcuts. With 
a Map. Price 7s. 6d. cloth extra. Forming the cheapest and most popu- 
lar Edition of a work on Arctic Life and Exploration ever published. 

" This is a very remarkable book, and unless ice very much misunder- 
stand both him and his book, the author is one of those men of whom great 
nations do well to be proud." — Spectator. 

A Winter in Algeria, 1863-4. By Mrs. George Albert Rogers. 
With illustrations. 8vo. cloth, 12s. 

Turkey. By J. Lewis Farley, F.S.S., Author of " Two Years 
in Syria." With Illustrations iu Chromo-lithography, and a Portrait of 
His Highness Fnad Pasha, fcvo. 12s. 

Wild Scenes in South America ; or, Life in the Llanos of Vene- 
zuela. By Don Ramon Paez. Numerous Illustrations. Post Svo. cl. 10s. 6d. 

The Land of Thor. By J. Rosse Browne. With upwards of 
100 Illustrations. Cloth, Ss. 6d. 



16 Sampson Low and Co.'s 

The Story of the Great March : a Diary of General Sherman's 
Campaign through Georgia and the Carolinas. By Brevet-Major G. W. 
Nichols, Aide-de-Camp to General Sherman. With a coloured Map and 
numerous Illustrations. 12mo. cloth, price 7s. 6d. 

The Prairie and Overland Traveller ; a Companion for Emigrants, 
Traders. Travellers, Hunters, and Soldiers, traversing great Plains and 
Prairies. By Capt. R. B. Marcey. Illustrated. Fcap. 8vo. cloth, 2s. 6d 

Home and Abroad (Second Series). A Sketch-book of Life, Men, 
and Travel, by Bayard Taylor. With Illustrations, post 8vo. cloth, 
8s. 6d. 

Northern Travel. Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, 

Lapland, and Norway, by Bayard Taylor. 1 vol. post 8vo., cloth, 8s. 6d. 

Also by the same Author, each complete in 1 vol., with Illustrations. 
Central Africa ; Egypt and the White Nile. 7s. 6d. 
India, China, and Japan. 7s. 6rf. 
Palestine, Asia Minor. Sicily, and Spain. 7s. 6d. 

Travels in Greece and Rus^a. With an Excursion to Crete. 7s. 6rf. 
Colorado. A Summer Trip. 7s. 6d. 

After the War : a Southern Tour extending from May, 1865, 

to May, 1866. By Whitlaw Reid, Librarian to the House of Represen- 
tatives. Illustrated. Post Svo. price 10s. 6d. 

Thirty Years of Army Life on the Border. By Colonel R. B. 
Marcy, U.S.A., Author of " The Prairie Traveller." With numerous 
Illustrations. 8vo. price 12s. 



INDIA, AMERICA, AND THE COLONIES. 

HE Great West. Guide and Hand-Book for Travellers, 

\&{ft Miners, and Emigrants to the Western and Pacific States of 

America; with a new Map. By Edward H. Hall. Is. 

Appleton's Hand-Book of American Travel — The 
Northern Tour; with M;ips of Routes of Travel and the principal 
Cities. By Edward H. Hall. New Edition. 1 vol. post Svo. 12s. 

Twelve Years in Canterbury, Kew Zpaland ; with Visits to the 
other Provinces, and Reminiscences of the Route Home through Austra- 
lia. By Mrs. Charles Ihomson. Fcap. 8vo. cloth, 3s. 6rf. 

Life's Work as it is ; or, the Emigrants Home in Australia. By 
a Colonist. Small post Svo. 3s. 6d.. 

Canada in 1864; a Hand-book for Settlers. By Henry T. N. 

Chesshyre. Fcap. 8vo. 2s. 6d. 

" When a man has something to say he can convey a good deal of matter 
in a few words. This book is but a small look, yet it leaves nothing untold 
that requires telling. The author is himself a settler, and knows what 
information is most nec< ssary for those who are about to become settlers." 
— Athenaeum. 

A History of the Discovery and Exploration of Australia: or, 

an Account of the Progress of Geographical Discovery in that Con- 
tinent, from the Earliest Period to the Present Day. By the Rev. Julian 
E. Tenison Woods, F.R.G.S., &c, &c. 2 vols, demy 8vo. cloth, 28*. 




List of Publications. 17 

South Australia : its Progress and Prosperity. By A. Forster> 
Esq. Demy 8vo. cloth, with Map, 15s. 

Jamaica and the Colonial Office : Who caused the Crisis ? By 
George Price, Esq. late Member of the Executive Committees of Go- 
vernors. 8vo cloth, with a Plan, 5s. 

The Colony of Victoria : its History, Commerce, and Gold 
Mining: its Social and Political Institutions, down to the End of 1863. 
With Remarks, Incidental and Comparative, upon the other Australian 
Colonies. By William Westgarth, Author of "Victoria and the Gold 
Mines," &c. 8vo. with a Map, cloth, 16s. 

Tracks of McKinlay and Party across Australia. By John Davis, 

one of the Expedition. With an Introductory View of recent Explora- 
tions. By Wm. Westgarth. With numerous Illustrations in chromo- 
lithography, and Map. 8vo. cloth, 16s. 

The Progress and Present State of British India ; a Manual of 
Indian History, Geography, and Finance, for general use; based upon 
Official Documents, furnished under the authority of Her Majesty's 
Secretary of State for India. By Montgomery Martin, Esq., Author 
of a " History of the British Colonies," &c. Post 8vo. cloth, 10s. 6d. 

The Cotton Kingdom : a Traveller's Observations on Cotton and 
Slavery in America, based upon three former volumes of Travels and 
Explorations. By Frederick Law Olmsted. With Map. 2 vols, post 8vo. 
11. Is. 

A History of the Origin, Formation, and Adoption of the Con- 
stitution of the United States of America, with Notices of its Principal 
Framers. By George Ticknor Curtis, Esq. 2 vols. 8vo. Cloth, 11. 4s. 

The Principles of Political Economy applied to the Condition, 
the Resources, and Institutions of the American People. By Francis 
Bowen. 8vo. Cloth, 14s. 

A History of New South Wales from the Discovery of New 
Holland in 1616 to the present time. By the late Roderick Flanagan, 
Esq., Member of the Philosophical Society of New South Wales. 2 
vols. 8vo. 2-ls. 

Canada and its Resources. Two Prize Essays, by Hogan and 
Morris. 7s., or separately, Is. 6d. each, and Map, 3s. 



SCIENCE AND DISCOVERY. 

DICTIONARY of Photography, on the Basis of 

Sutton's Dictionary. Rewritten by Professor Dawson, of King's 
College, Editor of the" Journal of Photography ;" and Thomas 
Sutton, B.A., Editor of '-Photograph Notes." 8vo. with 
numerous Illustrations. 8s. 6d. 

A History of the Atlantic Telegraph. By Henry M. Field. 12mo. 
7s. 6d. 

The Structure of Animal Life. By Louis Agassiz. With 46 
Diagrams. 8vo. cloth, 10s. 6d. 




18 Sampson Low and Co.'s 

The Physical Geography of the Sea and its Meteorology ; or, the 

Economy of the Sea and its Adaptations, its Salts, its Waters, its Climates, 
its Inhabitants, and whatever there may be of general interest in its Com- 
mercial Uses or Industrial Pursuits. By Commander M. F. Maury, LL.D. 
Tenth Edition. With Charts. Post 8vo. cloth extra, 5s. 

" To Captain Maury we are indebted for much information — indeed, for 
all that mankind possesses— of the crust of the earth beneath the blue 
waters of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Hopelessly scientific would 
these subjects be in the hands of most men, yet upon each and all of them 
Captain Maury enlists our attention, or charms us with explanations and 
theories, replete with originality and genius. His is indeed a nautical 
manual, a hand-book of the sea, investing with fresh interest every wave 
that beats upon our shores ; and it cannot fail to awaken in both sailors 
and landsmen a craving to know more intimately the secrets of that won- 
derful element. The good that Maury has done in awakening the powers 
of observation of the Royal and Mercantile No vies of England and America 
is incalculable." — Blackwood's Magazine. 

The Kedge Anchor ; or, Young Sailor's Assistant, by William 
Brady. Seventy Illustrations. 8vo. 16s. 

Archaia ; or, Studies of the Cosmogony and Natural History of 
the Hebrew Scriptures. By Professor Dawson, Principal of McGill 
College, Canada. Post 8vo. cloth, cheaper edition, 6s. 

Ichnographs, from the Sandstone of the Connecticut River, 
Massachusetts, U. S. A. By James Dean, M.D. One volume, 4to. with 
Forty-six Plates, cloth, 27s. 

The Recent Progress of Astronomy, by Elias Loomis, LL.D. 

3rd Edition. Post 8vo. 7s. 6d. 

An Introduction to Practical Astronomy, by the Same. 8vo. 
cloth. 8s. 

Manual of Mineralogy, including Observations on Mines, Rocks, 

Reduction of Ores, and the Application of the Science to the Arts, with 
260 Illustrations. Designed for the Use of Schools and Colleges. By 
James D. Dana, A.M., Author of a " System of Mineralogy." New Edi- 
tion, revised and enlarged. 12mo. Half bound, 7s. 6d. 

Cyclopaedia of Mathematical Science, by Davies and Peck. 8vo. 
Sheep. 18s. 



TRADE, AGRICULTURE, DOMESTIC 
ECONOMY, ETC. 

HE Book of Farm Implements, and their Construction; 
by John L. Thomas. With 200 Illustrations. 12mo. 6s. 6rf. 

The Practical Surveyor's Guide ; by A. Duncan. Fcp. 

8vo. 4s. 6d. 

Villas and Cottages; by Calvert Vaux, Architect. 300 Rlustra- 
tions. 8vo. cloth. 12s. 

Bee-Keeping. By "The Times" Bee-master. Small post 8vo. 
numerous Illustrations, cloth, 5s. 

The English and Australian Cookery Book. Small post 8vo. 
Coloured Illustrations, cloth extra, 4s. 6d. 




List of Publications. 19 

The Bubbles of Finance : the Revelations of a City Man. Fcap. 
8vo. fancy boards, price 2s. 6d. 

The Profits of Panics. By the Author of " The Bubbles of 
Finance." 12mo. boards. Is. 

Coffee : A Treatise on its Nature and Cultivation. With some 
remarks on the management and purchase of Coffee Estates. By Arthur 
R. W. Lascelles. Post 8vo. cloth, 2s. 6d. 

The Railway Freighter's Guide. Defining mutual liabilities of 
Carriers and Freighters, and explaining system of rates, accounts, 
invoices, checks, booking, and permits, and all other details pertaining 
to traffic management, as sanctioned by Acts of Parliament, Bye-laws, 
and General Usage. By J. S. Martin. 12mo. Cloth, 2s. (5d. 



THEOLOGY. 

>?£HE Origin and History of the Books of the New Testa- 
Sjfl ment, Canonical and Apocryj 




Apocryphal. 1 Designed to show what the 
Bible is not, what it is, and how to use it. By Professor C. E. 
Stowe. 8vo. 8s. 6d. With plates, 10s. 6d. 

" The zcork exhibits in every page the stamp of untiring industry, per- 
sonal research, and sound method. There is such a tone of hearty earnest- 
ness, vigorous thought, and clear decisive expression about the book, that one 
is cordially disposed to welcome a theological work which is neither unitarian 
in doctrine, sensational in style, nor destructive in spirit." — London 
Review. 

" The author brings out forcibly the overwhelming manuscript evidence 
for the books of the New Testament as compared with the like evidence for 
the best attested of the profane writers. . . . He adds these remarks : 
' I insert these extracts here because the Fathers had ivays of looking at 
the books of the Bible which in our day have nearly become obsolete, and 
which ought, in some measure at least, to be revived. The incredulity of 
our own times in regard to the Bible is due, not so much to the want of 
evidence as to the want of that reverence, and affection, and admiration of 
the Scriptures, which so distinguished the Christians of the early ages,' 
words in which ice can heartily concur.'' — Churchman. 

" Without making ourselves responsible for all the writer's opinions, par- 
ticularly on the question of inspiration, we have no hesitation in recording 
our judgment that this is one of the most useful books which our times have 
produced." — Watchman. 

" The book is very ably written, and will be read with pleasure by all 
those icho icish to find fresh arguments to confirm them in their faith." — 
Observer. 

The Vicarious Sacrifice ; grounded on Principles of Universal 
Obligation. By Horace Bushnell, D.D., Author of " Nature and the 
Supernatural, &c. Crown 8vo. 7s. 6d. 

" An important contribution to theological literature, whether we regard 
the amount of thought which it contains, the systematic nature of the 
treatise, or the practical effect of its teaching. . . . No one can rise 
from the study of his book without having his mind enlarged by its pro- 
found speculation, his devotion stirred by its piety, and his faith established 
on a broader basis of thought and knowledge.'" — Guardian. 
Also by the same Author. 

Christ and His Salvation. 6s. 

Nature and the Supernatural. 3s. 6d 

Christian Nurture. Is. 6d. 

Character of Jesus. &d. 

New Life. Is. 6d. 

Work and Play. 3s. 6d. 



20 Sampson Low and Co. 's 

The Land and the Book, or Biblical Illustrations drawn from 
the Manners and Customs, the Scenes and the Scenery of the Holy Land, 
by W. M. Thomson, M.D., twenty-five years a Missionary in Syria and 
Palestine. With 3 Maps and several hundred Illustrations. 2 vols. 
Post 8vo. cloth. 1/. Is. 

Missionary Geography for the use of Teachers and Missionary 
Collectors. Fcap. 8vo. with numerous maps and illustrations, 3s. 6d. 

A Topographical Picture of Ancient Jerusalem ; beautifully co- 
loured. Nine feet by six feet, on rollers, varnished. 31. 3s. 

The Light of the World : a most True Relation of a Pilgrimess 
travelling towards Eternity. Divided into Three Parts : which deserve 
to be read, understood, and considered by all who desire to be saved. 
Reprinted from the edition of 1696. Beautifully printed by Clay on 
toned paper. Crown 8vo. pp. 593, bevelled boards, 10s. 6d. 

The Life of the late Dr. Mountain, Bishop of Quebec. 8vo. 
cloth, price 10s. 6d. 

The Mission of Great Sufferings. By Elibu Burritt. 12mo. 5s. 

" Mr. Burritt strikes this chord of sympathy with suffering in tones that 
make the reader's heart thrill within him. But the tales he tells of the 
present age must not be allowed to leave the impression tfud ice have sailed 
into an Utopian period of a living and universal love, both of God and 
man. They do prove — and it is a precious and cheering thing, although not 
the most precious — that the present gen/ration is promptly pitiful at any 
cost of self-sacrifice towards evils that it really feels to be evils, disease and 
hunger, and cold and nakedness. The book is a specimen of powerful, 
heart-stirring writing." — Guardian. 

" 'This is a most valuable work on a subject of deep importance. The 
object is to show the aim and action of great sufferings in the development 
of Christian faith and of spiritual life." — Observer. 

Faith's Work Perfected. The Rise and Progress of the Orphan 
Houses of Halle. From the German of Francke. By William L. 
Gage. Fcap. 2s. 6d. 

A Short Method of Prayer; an Analysis of a Work so entitled 

by Madame de la Mothe-Guyon ; by Thomas C. Upham, Professor of 
Mental and Moral Philosophy in Bowdoin College,U.S. America. Printed 
by Whittingham. 12mo. cloth. Is. 

Christian Believing and Living. By F. D. Huntington, D.D. 

Crown 8vo. cloth, 3s. 6d. 

Life Thoughts. By the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher. Two Series, 
complete in one volume, well printed and well bound. 2s. 6d. Superior 
edition, illustrated with ornamented borders. Sm. 4to. cloth extra. 7s. 6d. 

Dr. Beecher's Life and Correspondence : an Autobiography. 

Edited by his Son. 2 vols, post 8vo. with Illustrations, price 21s. 

Life and Experience of Madame de la Mothe Guyon. By Pro- 
fessor Upham. Edited by an English Clergyman. Crown 8vo. cloth, with 
Portrait. Third Edition, 7s. 6d." 

By the same Author. 
Life of Madame Catherine Adorna; 12mo. cloth. 4s. 6d. 
The Life of Faith, and Interior Life. 2 vols. 5s. 6d. each. 
The Divine Union. 7s. 6d. 



List of Publications. 21 



LAW AND JURISPRUDENCE. 

HEATON'S Elements of International Law. An 
entirely new edition, edited by It. E. Dana, Author of 
" Two Years before the Mast," &c. Royal 8vo. cloth extra, 

MM 30s - 

History of the Law of Nations: by Henry Wheaton. LL.D. 

author of the " Elements of International Law." Roy. 8vo. cloth, 31s. 6d. 

Commentaries on American Law; by Chancellor Kent. Ninth 
and entirely New Edition. 4 vols. 8vo. calf. 51. 5s. ; cloth, 4/. 10s. 

Treatise on the Law of Evidence ; by Simon Greenleaf, LL.D. 
3 vols. 8vo. calf. 4/. 4s. 

Treatise on the Measure of Damages ; or, An Enquiry into 
the Principles which govern the Amount of Compensation in Courts of 
Justice. By Theodore Sedgwick. Third revised Edition, enlarged. 
Imperial 8vo. cloth. 31s. 6d. 

Justice Story's Commentaries on the Constitution of the United 

States. 2 vols. 36s. 

Justice Story's Commentaries on the Laws, viz. Bailments — 

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LONDON POEMS. 

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lived before they were written down." — Athenaeum. 

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certainly announces a true poetic fame." — Spectator. 

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distinctly visible as soon as we have got over the first impression of ivonder 
at the largeness of his intelligence, his power of dramatic individualization 
(so to speak), the beneficent daring with which he paints, the generous 

humanity of his puinting, and the originality of his music If 

this is only the 'spring' of the arch, what is its course to be? We may 
well rejoice, meanwhile, in the prospect that we are to have a very great 
poet." — Illustrated Times. 

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already accomplished." — British Quarterly Review. 



WORKS BY ROBERT BUCHANAN. 

ii. 

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IDYLS AND LEGENDS OF 

INVEEBUEN. 

BY ROBERT BUCHANAN. 



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"A volume of genuine poetry of distinguished merit." 

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UNDERTONES. 

BY ROBERT BUCHANAN. 



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and harmonious expression." — Daily News. 

" Poetry, and of a noble kind." — Athenaeum. 



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WORKS BY ROBERT BUCHANAN. 



Ato., Illustrated by Eminent Artists, price Ten Shillings 
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BALLAD STORIES OF THE 
AFFECTIONS. 

FROM THE SCANDINAVIAN. 
BY ROBERT BUCHANAN. 



" We have thus referred to this excellent collection of fanciful images, 
strange turns of invention, and intensely dramatic pictures, in order to 
express our sense of the author's good fortune in putting so many treasures 
before the public ; the latter will welcome his success with a new sense oj 
pleasure and obligation to one who has so often done well in his own 
person." — Athenaeum. 

" Mr. Buchanan beautifies all that he touches upon in verse. Here 
are subjects which test the ring oj the metal whereof he is made, and the 
sound comes out sharp and clear. They of the ice-ribbed North in olden 
time were a hardy and rugged race, but they were a hearty people 
too, and from their hearts came many a spark of true love when the saga 
writers struck with the steel oj their genius. Mr. Buchanan echoes their 
whole tone in these pages. No other poet of the day, perhaps, could have 
done it so well." — Standard. 

" We heartily welcome and commend these renderings of Scandinavian 
poetry, and' only wish that Mr. Buchanan could be persuaded to go on 
with this sort of work." — Daily Telegraph. 

" 'Axel and Walborg,' the longest ballad in the volume, is also, 
perhaps, the finest ; but Oehlenschlager's ' Children in the Moon ' is ex- 
quisite, and is, moreover, exquisitely translated. Indeed, none but a true 
poet could possibly have wrought some of the translations in this interest- 
ing volume The book is beautifully printed and richly illustrated." 

Morning- Star. 

" Every page is true poetry of the old ballad kind, and nearly all the 
modern ballads of Oehlenschlager are complete little works of rare art. 
4 The Treasure Seeker' especially is a poetic gem that will delight all who 
read it." — Spectator. 



WORKS BY ROBERT BUCHANAN. 






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NORTH COAST, 

AND OTHER POEMS. 
BY ROBERT BUCHANAN. 



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" Mr. Buchanan is a real poet, with some of the best elements of the 
art at his dispoMl." — Daily News. 

" Contains certain poems as fine as any he has ever written." 

London Review. 

" The collection will add to the already great reputation Mr. Buchanan 
enjoys as one of the truest and most genuine poets of the present day." 

Observer. 

" They contain, we think, Mr. Buchanan's most powerful work 

There is in the volume the truest pathos, a most dramatic humour, a high 
spiritual imagbuxtion, and a mood of brooding, mystic feeling, perfectly 

original, and curiously thrilling of its kind At every reading 

they grow upon the heart of the reader." — Spectator. 



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